"Their short proboscis sips No luscious nectar from the wild thyme's lips, From the lime's leaf no amber drops they steal, Nor bear their grooveless thighs the foodful meal: On others toils, in pamper'd leisure thrive The lazy fathers of th' industrious hive." "Yet oft, we're told, these seeming idlers share The pleasing duties of parental care. With fond attention guard each genial cell, And watch the embryo bursting from its shell." +Evans.+[A] [Footnote A: The elegant writer from whose unfinished poem, "The Bees," I have made the above quotations, was for many years an eminent physician in Shrewsbury, but has now retired into Wales, where I hope he will find sufficient leisure and encouragement to resume the truly classical theme which he has so nearly completed. Of the three parts which have been already published, I shall frequently avail myself in the course of this treatise, as well as of the highly interesting notes which are appended to them.] Mr. Morris of Isleworth, in the Transactions of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, &c. for 1791, gives it as his opinion that the drones "_sit upon the eggs_, as the mother lays them;" and says that he has "often seen them sit in a formal manner on the combs, when the brood is hatching, while the other bees were very busy at work." I suspect that Mr. Morris mistook _sleeping_ for _brooding_, and that the drones were only taking a nap. Fabricius says that insects never sit on their eggs. Messrs. Kirby and Spence, however, have observed that the female ear-wig does: they also make one other exception in favour of the field bug (_Cimex griseus_), but add that these are the only ones. De Geer has given a very interesting account of both these insects, particularly of the strength of parental affection exhibited by the females. The female of the former assiduously sits upon her eggs, as if to hatch them, and after they are hatched, broods over the young as a hen over young chickens. And when the eggs of the latter are hatched, she also, after the manner of a hen, goes about with the brood, consisting of thirty or forty in number and never leaves them: they cluster round her when she is still, and follow her closely wherever she moves.