Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/132

128 all the food which a cow eats contributes to the production of milk, or, to adopt a nearer simile from the insect tribe, as all the food which a spider takes contributes not only to the nourishment of the animal, but to the production of the substance of the cob-web from its body. Numberless other analogies in nature might be adduced in favour of the probability of this theory. The silk, for instance, produced from the body of the silk-worm, is a substance as different from that of the animal itself, or of the mulberry leaf it feeds on, as wax is from that of the body of the bee, or of the honey or flower she sucks. And the excrescence produced in the human ear, which also goes by the name of wax, is certainly a substance as different from that of the body which produces it as either the one or the other. Upon the whole, until I meet with a more probable theory, supported by facts, I must give it as my humble opinion that the wax is produced from the body of the bee alone, or rather, that the bees can speedily convert into wax what they bring from the flowers, and therewith build their combs and seal up both their young and their honey."

Farina, or Pollen.—Farina, or Pollen, is the fertilizing dust of flowers and forms a very important ingredient in the nourishment of the young bees. Before the discovery of the true origin of wax, it was supposed to constitute the rude material of that substance, being taken into the stomach and converted by some peculiar action of that organ, into real wax; and hence, among French naturalists, it had obtained the name