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box to observe them on my return home; but a violent shower, which came on at this moment, offered me a sight as singular as unexpected. As soon as the rain was over, I saw the earth strewed with females without wings. They were most likely the * that I had seen in the air. very ones On my return home, I placed my eight prisoners with some moist earth in a garden pot covered with a glass. It was nine o'clock in the evening: at ten the females had lost their wings, which I observed scattered here and there, and were hiding themselves under the earth." Three of the insects placed in a box, without earth at the bottom, did not, on this account, divest themselves of their wings; but another, furnished with a light earthen bed, no sooner perceived it, than “she extended her wings with some effort, brought them before her head, crossed them in all directions, threw them from side to side, and produced so many singular contortions, that all four wings fell off at the same moment. After this change she reposed, brushed her corslet with her feet, then traversed the ground, appearing to seek a place of shelter; she partook of the honey

I

gave her, and at last found a hiding place under some loose earth that formed a little natural grotto." Huber repeated, and describes minutely, the like experiments on several females of different species, and always with the same results.

Gould (writing about 1747, and calling the winged females "large ant-flies," the males small ones,) says-" If you place a number (of the former) in a box, the wings of many of them

will, after some time, gradually fall off like autumnal leaves." He also observes, that "a large ant-fly (contrary to other insects) gains by the loss of her wings, is afterwards promoted to a throne, and drops these external ornaments as emblems of too much levity for a sovereign." sovereign." But as female ants hold little of the state and none of the authority of queens, he would have spoken of their wings more properly as incumbrances to their new matronly duties, one of which is the construction of chambers in the earth. July and August is their usual season for disrobing.

"If all the year were playing holidays,

To sport would be as tedious as to work."

ALL the worlds within our world of earth are now supereminently busy. The fashionable world is making a weary business of Pleasure-the trading world a weary pleasure of Business. For the luxury of the one, and the profit of the other, the working world (as always) is busy enough too; though as to pleasure it is, alas! seldom enough that we behold her jocund ladyship tripping hand-in-hand with toil in the barren land of labour as laid down in the chart politic. But

of all the worlds now busy, the insect world (as busy as any) combines, perhaps, with its labour the most equal amount of pleasure. Here at least we may joy our eyes with the sight of work and play as frequent companions, and when not exactly seen together, they are here found almost always to follow each other in close and orderly succession.

Some insects indeed there now are neither merry at their work nor merry at their play, yet are they, nevertheless, in passive enjoyment of a summer holiday. These consist, for the most part, of certain "Spinners and Knitters in the sun," whose chief work as caterpillars having been finished in spring or early summer, are now, as aurelias, slumbering in golden rest; while others, occupied in their last laborious effort, are bursting from their self-wrought trammels, whether of silk or fabric more substantial, to employ themselves henceforth, with other busy idlers, solely in pursuit of pleasure.

Distinguished from these active idlers, as most active of workers, are the busy Bees; and in these especially, as we watch them half-labouring, half-revelling in the midst of sunny odours, we seem to see business and pleasure mingled in their very essences, and enclosed-a drop to each-within those tiny vases aux milles fleurs"- the bodies of our insect gatherers.

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Of the business seemingly so pleasant which makes up the life of a Bee Labourer, be it now our business and our pleasure to say a few words, at all events, in season. But how do

justice to the honeyed theme? How discourse sweetly and wisely, yet withal briefly—above all, with ought of novelty-of those favoured labours sung by a Virgil, chronicled by a Varro, hymned by a Watts, dramatised in the "good old times” of our Virgin Queen-royally patronised in the better new times of our wedded monarch?

A bee-hive, however, is no easily exhausted store, containing, as an object of thought, an infinite number of things besides bees, or wax, or honey. It is a perfect emblematic treasury, filled with analogies, precepts, patterns, poetry, morality, divinity.

In our sketch of bees as "a body politic," we have seen indeed how ill befitting is their waxen imagery to serve as a model for human imitation-how frail to falling dynasties the support of waxen pillars; but there yet remains in the economy of the hive (especially as exhibited in bee labour) enough in plenty for counsel, for reproof, for pattern, for reflection, for admiration-all resolving themselves into adoration of Him to whom adoration alone is due.

But it is time, without further prelude, to open the straw casket wherein so many jewels are contained; though, in truth, it is in their very profusion, full as much as in their previous appropriation, that a difficulty lies. How from the flowers of bee economy, in themselves so numerous, and numerously culled, shall we select a small and simple posy, fit on this summer