and it may be presumed that each bee severally and successively undertakes each task, that the faculty for exercising it may not be extinguished. It is very possibly a daily change, which circulates through the entire civic population of workers. Although the labours of the bees are divided, we do not find that even the most successful observers, who have had every opportunity, by the nature of the hives they possessed, and the sagacity they applied to the detection of the most minute particulars, have been enabled to discover that these workers were permanently separated into distinct classes,—indeed, although surmising from this distribution of labour that such might be the case, and thus made alert to the discovery of its positive confirmation by direct observation, they have never been able to do so; and they strongly deny it, maintaining that these duties are individually transferable, and that they are not restricted to certain classes, already sufficiently implied by the organization of the workers. Huber, it is true, states that the wax-sculpturers—those which finish the cells to their nicety of perfection—are smaller than any of the rest of the community, to facilitate their operations within the cells, which may perhaps be a foregone conclusion. The idea of administrative vigilance in the distribution of the labour of the community is strongly corroborated by the fact that all the labours proceed _pari passu_ and in equable order, no excessive preponderance of any particular work having been observed, which would certainly sometimes be the case were there no limiting control over their individual action, and thus the harmonious concurrence of all to one effect seriously disturbed. The supposition is also strengthened by the unfailing attendance of the queen’s numerous and deferential retinue, some one or other of whom, every now and then, quits that service—perhaps as an envoy on business of government—and is replaced by another. All these many circumstances lead to the presumption that the queen is the heart of the whole body, the organ which forces forward the circulation through its diverse channels, giving to all the temperate pulsation of vigorous health.