the guards, carefully avoiding their flexible organs, as if aware that its safety depended on its caution."[1]
Taste. In Bees, Taste appears, on a slight view, to differ most materially from that sense in man; and because with all their eager fondness for the rich nectar of flowers, they are frequently detected lapping the impure fluid from corrupted marshes, it has been hastily concluded, that their sense of Taste is very defective. Huber thought it the least perfect of the Bee-senses, and instances their gathering honey even from poisonous flowers, and regaling themselves with fœtid liquids. Now, with deference to this distinguished observer, it may be permitted, perhaps, to defend our favourites from so injurious an imputation. We have prima facie evidence of the delicacy of their taste in their eager activity in collecting their delicious stores of honey secreted by the most fragrant flowers; and such is their ardour in these operations, that they defy the elements when the honey-season is at its height, and, laying aside their usual fears of bad weather, boldly encounter wind and rain to get at their favourite fluid. Huber acknowledges, that when "the lime-tree and black grain blossom, they brave the rain, depart before sunrise, and return later than ordinary. But their activity relaxes after the flowers have faded; and when the enamel adorning the meadows has fallen under the scythe, the Bees remain in their dwelling, however brilliant the sunshine." Wherefore have they not,
- ↑ Huber, 284.
