The _temperature of insects_ not gregarious, is generally that of the medium they inhabit; but bees possess the power not only of preserving a high temperature during the coldest mouths of winter, but of raising that temperature under particular circumstances. +Dr. Darwin+ has observed that they generate heat by a general motion of their legs, as they hang clustered together in the hives: +Huber+ thinks that it may be increased by the agitation of their wings;--whatever disturbs them so as to cause a tumult invariably produces a considerable accession of heat. +Inch+, a _German_, plunged a thermometer into a bee-hive in the winter, and saw the mercury stand 27 degrees higher than it did in the open air. +Mr. Hunter+ found the _heat of a hive_ vary from 73° to 84° of Fahrenheit; and +Huber+, who says that in a prosperous hive the thermometer in winter commonly stands at from 86° to 88°, and in summer between 95° and 97°, states that he has observed it, on some occasions, to rise suddenly from about 92° to above 104°. The former naturalist, about ten o'clock in the morning, in the middle of July, when the quicksilver in the thermometer in the open air ranged at 54°, found that on plunging it into a bee-hive, it rose in less than five minutes to 82°. At five the next morning it stood at 79°,--at nine it had risen to 83°,--at one to 84°; and at nine in the evening it had fallen to 78°. On the 30th of December, when the temperature of the air was 35°, that in the hive was 73°. Bees also possess the power of counteracting or throwing off superabundant heat, by perspiration. +Huber+ observed, that when crowded together in hot weather, they become much heated, and perspire so copiously that those near the bottom seem perfectly drenched, and are for a time incapable of flying from the moisture on their wings. +Motion.+