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The Life of the Bee ments, so methodically conceived that they must infallibly answer some purpose which no observer has as yet, I believe, been able to divine.

A few days more, and the lids of these myriad urns—whereof a considerable hive will contain from sixty to eighty thousand—will break, and two large and earnest black eyes will appear, surmounted by antennæ that already are groping at life, while active jaws are busily engaged in enlarging the opening from within. The nurses at once come running; they help the young bee to emerge from her prison, they clean her and brush her, and at the tip of their tongue present the first honey of the new life. But the bee, that has come from another world, is bewildered still, trembling and pale; she wears the feeble look of a little old man who might have escaped from his tomb, or perhaps of a traveller strewn with the 236