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44 usefulness when about a month old, and at that time she will do any of the duties of the hive which she deems necessary, even to helping the young bees in the housework. She still has all her fur and her wings are as yet whole; but if there is much to do she is untiring and unremitting in her labours and, with never a thought of self, wears herself out. Her old age is evident by the loss of the fuzz, which was the pride of her youth, and the segments of her body become bald and shiny. Then her hard-worked wings begin to fray at the edges until there comes a day when, out on her quest for food for the colony, the broken wings and tired muscles refuse to support her, and she falls into the grass and dies; even then her last thought is not for self, but for the precious load which she struggles to carry home. Better thus for her to die in the field than to faint in the hive, for then do her vigorous sisters seize her and thrust her forth, and she falls into the refuse heap in front of the home, which she has so eagerly wasted her life to sustain. There is no gratitude and no pensioning in the bee-world; death and oblivion are meted mercilessly to the most ardent workers when they fail, for thus, and thus only, can the colony be kept strong. The individual is nothing in the perfect socialism, and the colony is everything; the treatment is Spartan, with none of the weakness which makes us keep alive the hopelessly insane, the idiotic, and the criminal.