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The Life of the Bee work, begun in the dazzling sunshine, receives its crown in the darkness. To be comprehensive, one should mention also the somewhat subsequent works and investigations of Charles Bonnet and Schirach (who solved the enigma of the royal egg); but I will keep to the broad lines, and pass at once to François Huber, the master and classic of contemporary apiarian science.

Huber was born in Geneva in 1750, and fell blind in his earliest youth. The experiments of Réaumur interested him; he sought to verify them, and soon becoming passionately absorbed in these researches, eventually, with the assistance of an intelligent and faithful servant, François Burnens, devoted his entire life to the study of the bee. In the annals of human suffering and human triumph there is nothing more touching, no lesson more admirable, than the story of this 12