might be related relative to this industrious insect; as their uniting together in scooping out earth, the conveyance of materials for the construction of their nests, and the curious structure of the nest itself, which, though it appears piled up at random, will be found, on stricter examination, to be a work of art and design, with other circumstances which are too long to be enumerated here. [86] Lessers Theologie des Insectes, tom. 1, p. 143. The fecundity of insects exceeds in an astonishing degree that of all the productions of nature; the vegetables which cover the surface of the earth bear no proportion to their multitudes, every plant supporting a number often of scarce perceptible creatures: of the fatal effects of their prodigious multiplication, our fruit trees, &c. are too frequently a deplorable testimony. On the continent whole provinces sometimes languish in consequence of the dreadful havoc made by them. Reaumur calculated the fecundity of the queen bee as follows: he found that she laid in the two months of March and April 12,000 eggs, so that the swarm which left the hive in May consisted of near 12,000 bees, all produced from one mother: but this calculation falls short of that which was made by Leeuwenhoek on a fly, whose larva feeds on flesh, putrid carcases, &c. which multiply prodigiously, and that in a short space of time. One of these laid 144 eggs, from which he got as many flies in the first month; so that, supposing one-half of these to be females, in the third month we shall have 746,496, all produced in three months from one fly.