"When noon-tide Sirius glares on high, Young Love ascends the glowing sky, From vein to vein swift shoots prolific fire, And thrills each insect fibre with desire. Thence, Nature, to fulfil thy prime decree, Wheels round, in wanton rings, the courtier bee; Now shyly distant, now with bolden'd air. He woos and wins the all-complying fair: Through fields of ether, veil'd in vap'ry gloom, They seek, with amorous haste, the nuptial room; As erst th' immortal pair, on Ida's height, Wreath'd round their noon of joy, ambrosial night." +Evans.+ The males and the fertile females, among ants, are winged insects; the former, as in the case of drone bees, perish a short time after their amours; and the females, having alighted upon a spot suitable for the formation of a colony, cut off their own wings, as being no longer of any use to them. (Linnæus had observed that the females lost their wings a certain period after impregnation.) A domino Hunter didici, se bombinatrices sub oculos in coitu junctos, ut apud muscas mos est, vidisse. "Aculeus," inquit, "articulo temporis ejicitur, et inter gemina insecta, dorso feminæ imponitur. Hoc situ aliquandiù manent." In the hornet it is the same. If the queen-bee be confined, though amid a seraglio of males, she continues barren. Prior to her flight, (which is preceded by the flight of the drones,) she reconnoitres the exterior of the hive, apparently for the purpose of recognition, and sometimes, after flying a few feet from it, returns to it again: finally she rises aloft in the air, describing in her flight horizontal circles of considerable diameter, till she is out of sight. She returns from her aërial excursion in about half an hour, with the most evident marks of fecundation. Excursions are sometimes made for a shorter period, but then she exhibits no sign of having been impregnated. It is curious that Bonner should have remarked those aërial excursions, without suspecting their object. "I have often," says he, "seen the young queens taking an airing upon the second or third day of their age." Yet Huish says, "It is an acknowledged tact that the queen-bee never leaves the hive, on any account whatsoever." Perhaps Huish's observations were made upon first swarms; and these, according to Huber, are uniformly conducted by old queens. Swammerdam also made the same observation as to _first swarms being always led off by old queens_. Old queens have not the same occasion to quit the hives that young ones have,--viz. to have intercourse with the drones; for, according to Huber, one impregnation is sufficient to fertilize all the eggs that are laid for two years afterwards, at least. He _thinks_ it is sufficient to fertilize all that she lays during her whole life. This may appear, to some, an incredible period; and Huish inquires, admitting that