Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/21

 MEMOIR OF HUBER.

Naturalist whose researches have been specially directed to the instinct and operations of the domestic Honey-Bee, will be strongly disposed to regard the subject of this memoir as at the very head of Apiarian science and his writings as forming the safest and most useful text-book. Multitudes have written on this interesting department of Natural History, and have added more or less to our knowledge of what has been a subject of investigation for ages. But none, either in ancient or modern times, have displayed so much sagacity of research as Francis Huber, nor so much patient perseverance and accuracy of experiment, even admitting some errors of minor importance detected by succeeding observers. His success in discovery, notwithstanding the singular difficulty he had to struggle with, was proportioned to his intelligence and acuteness; and this difficulty arose, not from what some of his advocates have, in their zeal in his defence against the sneers of the sceptical, termed "imperfect vision," but from total blindness. For, from the period when he first applied