disbelieve the alleged fact, and must, in accordance with the truth, withhold from our favourites the unmerited eulogiums they have received on this head. They are, in fact, in this particular, harsh and unfeeling in the extreme. In hundreds of instances have we seen and pitied the infant insect, when after having long struggled to get out of its cradle, it has at last succeeded so far as to extrude the head; and when labouring with the most eager impatience, and on the very point of extricating the shoulders also, which would at once secure its exit, a dozen or two of workers, in following their avocations, trample without ceremony over the struggling creature, which is then forced, for the safety of its head, to pop quickly down into its cell, and wait till the unfeeling crowd pass on, before it can renew its efforts to escape. Again and again are the same impatient exertions repeated by the same individual, and with similar mortifying interruptions, before it succeeds in obtaining its freedom. Not the slightest attention or sympathy is observable on the part of the workers in these circumstances; nor did we ever, in a single instance, witness the kind parental cares which seem to owe their existence to the fancy of the writers alluded to. During the larva-stage, as we have shewn, the solicitude of the workers about the welfare and nourishment of their infant charge is extreme; but from the moment they have sealed up the cell, and while the larva is undergoing its transformation, they seem to cease from every thing like individual attention; and though when a brood-comb is meddled with, their
