the Réaumurs, who, far from contesting the genius of insects, give us numberless facts to prove that it is flexible, that it can increase with dangers and with obstacles, that it can quit routine, and in certain circumstances make unexpected progress."

Intelligence among the inferior animals seems always more or less an affair of acute senses; the bee certainly ought to manifest much of it, for his senses are extraordinary. Not to speak of that singular sixth sense of the antennæ, by whose power alone he fashions his cell and seems to make and receive communication, nor of his wonderful eyesight, to which a double kind of eye contributes, one portion of it being for distance and another for vertical objects or for closer work,—although there are naturalists who consider these stemmata as a possible organ of hearing,—he has a sense of smell which must surpass that of any other creature on the wing: it is perhaps to this lively faculty that he owes his marvellous cleanliness. Féburier states that at one time the bees, attracted by the lemon-trees and flowers of Cuba, emigrated thither in a body from the mainland of Florida, a distance of twenty-five leagues,—the fact, however, being that their owners emigrated and took them with them. But they have been positively known to track heath a distance of four miles, and that across water, through an atmosphere in which the faint scent of the heath must have mingled with all the powerful salt odor of the sea. Strong little wings they must be, too, to travel these distances, and yet perform all the other labor allotted them; for every day, while some with their burdens are entering the black hive, and some are darting out again into the glaring sunlight full of business and on new errands, others may always be distinguished stationed by the door and fanning their bits of wings backward and forward in ventilation of the hive. Although disputatious to the last, Mr. Huish insists that this motion is nothing but the expression of intense satisfaction and joy. Either way, it would seem as if an answering rest must be required in order to repair such wear and tear; and on this point an old Spanish writer sets it down that bees sleep during every night and on all fast-days in addition, and a corroborating investigator remarks that he has seen them withdraw into the empty cells, and, composing themselves, their heads towards the bottom, enjoy the deepest slumber, the body gently heaving with the breath, and every little limb relaxed,—to which another person replies, that this is an outrageous statement, for it is a decided fact that sleep is as much a stranger to the eye of a bee as it is to the eye of a herring. Yet in the German countries much of the labor of flight is after all spared them, their owners collecting them into caravans, conducting them gypsy-wise, encamping here and encamping there, through whatever districts linger latest in bloom. They build bee-barges, too, in France, capacious enough for a hundred hives, and drift them down the rivers, so that the bees shall follow the summer as it flits southward. And in Lower Egypt, where the blossoming continues much longer than in the upper regions, Niebuhr saw an assemblage of four thousand hives upon the Nile; anchoring at places of plentiest pasturage: the bees thus float from one end of the land to the other before they return and enrich their proprietors with the honey they have harvested from the orange-flowers and jasmines of the Said and all the wealthy banks of the mighty river. The hunter in America takes advantage of this clear sight and of this strength of wing when, he lines a bee to its nest, by alluring one to a bait of honey within a circle of wet white paint, watching the subsequent flight, letting off another, similarly secured, at right angles to that, and looking for the nest at the intersection of the two white lines. Nor is the hunter their only depredator. At the Cape of Good Hope there lives a bird known as the Honey-Guide, that enters into alliance with man, sounds its shrill note, and, fluttering from spray to spray, leads the way to the sweet resort: it would be sacrilege, if the Hottentot did not leave a portion of the honey to the informer. There, too, is the rattel, a little beast that at sunset shelters its eyes with a paw, for clearer view, spots a bee, and follows it: often these two make fellowship together, the one for the honey, the bird for the brood. But these are not the terrors of a temperate clime; the hives can despatch a field-mouse unassisted; the master who cannot rid them of the wax-moth they will desert without regrets; sounding the slogan for aid, no two bees will hesitate to grapple with the bold butchering wasp that invades them; the humble-bee, making her underground nest, the poppy-bee, fitting her splendid scarlet tapestry, however many each may have, recks of few enemies beyond the rain and storm. What should any one of them all remember about the tomtit that comes and taps outside and snaps each resident up as it appears inquiring at the gate? of the little feathered monster that tears bees to pieces, making shreds of heads and wings for his mere amusement? To them a briefer memory makes brief life blessed. The happy murmurer of our morning knows of little but peace and security, he does not even dream that savans infuriate themselves about him, he buzzes from flower to flower, daringly puts aside the curtain of sacred shrines and makes himself luxurious hermitage in the snowy depths of the lilies, lets the south wind swing him a moment on the golden cradle of kingcups, pursues his pleasures in the purple recesses of the hyacinth, or, gliding into a labyrinth of petals, between the silken linings of perfumed chambers, the tinted sunlight softly sifting through, revels with the gracious nymphs that wait there, that hail him, caress him, and give him their confidence all under the rose; he goes his way, and his music spurns the trail of melancholy that never fails to follow the most delicious warble that ever trilled from throat of bobolink or throstle. As you lie and listen, in the golden tenor of the hive-bee's hum seems diffused the wide whisper of continuous gladness; and giving the innermost note of summer and of noon, the booming bass of the humble-bee blazons abroad all poetry and beauty and sumptuous delight.