common cells, you will be struck with the lightness of their structure, the wax expended upon them being employed with the strictest regard to economy, not a gram more being used than is barely necessary; whilst in fashioning the royal cradle, economy of materials would seem to be the last thing thought of. This has been so well expressed by an accomplished apiarian friend, the late Dr. Evans, of Shrewsbury, that I cannot forbear quoting his very words:-- "No more with wary thriftiness imprest, They grace with lavish pomp their royal guest; Nor heed the wasted wax nor rifted cell, To bid with fretted round th' imperial palace swell." You will perceive that the walls of these regal edifices, instead of being like those of the other cells, as thin as paper, to compare great things with small, are as substantial as the walls of a palace, the very title conferred upon them by Dr. Evans. The source from which wax is produced, though it had been imperfectly glanced at by one or two old apiarians, was not determined satisfactorily till within the last sixty or seventy years, it having been almost universally imagined that the substance which the bees import upon their thighs, viz., farina, formed its chief constituent; whereas it is now clearly ascertained that farina does not enter at all into the composition of wax, but that it is imported solely as food for embryo bees, and that wax is a secretion from between the scales, on the under parts of the bee's body, from which it is thrown off in thin layers. The little creatures, when wax is needed, distend their stomachs with honey and remain in a quiescent state for about twenty-four hours, within which time the honey becomes changed in its nature, and oozes out between the scales in thin flakes ready for use. These the little artists remove with their hind legs, carry them forward to their mouths, and then mincing them up with a frothy liquor till the mass becomes glutinous, reduce it to a state which admits of its being easily moulded into honey-combs or any other form.