S. B. Herrick

“ From increase of space, accession of heat, and the different quality and quantity of food given to the worm, that which would have become a worker becomes a queen. By this change of treatment, its anatomy and physiology, its instincts and functions, the time necessary for its development, and the length of its life, are all utterly changed. The queen performs but one office in the hive, that of supplying her realm with subjects, while the workers perform all the multitudinous offices which the economy of the hive demands. ”

“ The transmutation of inorganic into organic matter is only performed by vegetables, and then only under the controlling power of light. The distinction made by naturalists between the lowest forms of animal and vegetable life lies just here: vegetables convert the inorganic elements of earth, air, and water, into organized matter; animals rearrange this organized matter into animal tissue. It is well known, as no light penetrates the profounder oceanic depths, that no vegetation can exist there; an absence of animal life was therefore inferred. ”

“ The whole structure of the queen and workers is coördinated to their functions; she possesses the ovaries, which in the worker lie folded away in a germinal form, while they possess all the organs needed for their peculiar work—strong mandibles, powerful wings, pollen-basket, pincers, brush, wax-pockets, and honey-receptacle. Though queens are often made from worker-larvæ, Huber observed the old queen laying in royal cells, when the hive is about to throw off new swarms, and more than one queen will be required. ”

“ If the impregnation of the queen be deferred until the twenty-first day of her life, she not only lays nothing but drone-eggs, but her instincts are also impaired. Perfect, fertile queens always discriminate when laying; they deposit the drone and worker-eggs in their own peculiar cells, but the queens whose impregnation is retarded are indifferent, and lay their eggs anywhere. Previous to Huber's time, it was believed that the worker-bees, like worker-ants, carry away eggs thus misplaced, and deposit them in the proper cells ”

“ Huber concludes, from a number of experiments made in this direction, that, though the queen knows what kind of egg she is about to lay, and so deposits it always in the proper cell, yet she does not determine the sex of the egg, as is believed by many of the most distinguished modern apiarians. He also found that it is impossible to compel bees to rear a worker in a common cell, if it has been supplied with royal jelly. If the colony be queenless, they enlarge the cell into a royal cell; and, if they already possess a sovereign, they destroy the worm and devour the royal jelly. ”

“ Soothed by every appliance which ingenuity and ample means could afford, surrounded by the tenderest affection and the keenest sympathy in his pursuits, his darkened life was full of sweet compensations. ”

“ Some doubt still hung over this discovery, which was entirely dispelled by Huber's observations. Schirach stated that the bees can, by peculiar treatment, rear a queen from a worker-brood.
If a swarm of bees find itself suddenly queenless, the workers immediately select the larva of a common bee, not over three days old; they enlarge this cell by cutting down the partition-walls between it and two adjoining cells, destroying their inmates, and then they supply the remaining worm with food, differing in quality and quantity from that of the workers. ”

“ They are generated, like plants, by buds and by artificial sections; like plants, they are able, from a small fragment, to produce the whole organism. They, however, go farther than most plants in this power of reproducing lost parts; for a small fragment taken from any portion will suffice for the production of a new individual; a single tentacle will produce a flower and stem, and finally a whole colony. A transverse section of the stem will produce a flower at the distal end, and a continuation of the stem, with the process by which it attaches itself, at the proximal end of the section. ”

“ He retained to extreme age the tenderest affection for his friends; he showed to the last the untouched freshness of delight in Nature, the boyish candor and directness, the noble enthusiasm, the quick sympathy with youth and its interests, which so generally characterize men of science, and which offer one of the most unanswerable arguments in favor of the ennobling influence of such pursuits. ”

“ This had been so long an accepted fact, that Huber did not doubt its correctness till an observation of Burneus's induced him to make a series of experiments upon the subject. He confined one swarm of bees, giving them only honey, and another, supplying them with nothing but pollen. Seven times new comb was found in the first hive and removed, while none at all was made in the second. Wax is secreted like fat in other animals, from saccharine matter, and it accumulates, in layers of delicate white spicules, in the wax-pockets of the bees. ”

“ This is evidently the result, not of any peculiar instinct, but of the conformation of the cell, for the royal cocoon is complete if it be spun in a common cell. In ordinary cases, if the royal cocoon were complete, it would be impossible for a queen to destroy her rivals in the state of pupæ.
By repeated experiment, he showed that the size of a cell has no modifying effect upon the development of a bee, except by retarding its growth, if it be too small: a common bee is the same size, whether reared in drone or worker cells. ”

“ They sometimes, after development, free themselves from the parent stem, and lead a roving life as medusæ. In some cases the nutritive bud has its alimentary function suppressed, and, though not itself sexual, it is henceforth destined to produce sexual buds, either directly or through the medium of a non-sexual bud.
There is, it may almost be said, no differentiation of organs among the hydroids. In the adult form they possess no organs of sense, and have no circulatory, respiratory, nor nervous systems. All the functions of life are performed without the intervention of special organs. ”

“ The marvelous activity of mind, which to many men would have proved only a torment, was to Huber a source of the deepest delight. His love of music, and proficiency in the art, beguiled many hours, and added greatly to his social enjoyments. ”

“ The fact that the Ægean Sea is empty of life in its greatest depths is due to local causes. The humblest life, in the farthest recesses of the ocean's bed, is, in some of its essential features, but a sluggish copy of the higher types on land. Food and air are alike necessary
Fig. 4.—Generative Buds of Tubularia indivisa. (From Female Colony.)
to both. The circulation of currents throughout the open seas bears nutriment and oxygen to the lowly forms of animal life which lie far below the level penetrated by light, or capable of supporting vegetation. ”

“ The nearest approach, in the adult form, to special organs are the digestive cavity, and the cnidæ. The stomach, however, possesses no true parietal walls, and in one form—the fresh-water hydra—the stomach will do duty for the skin, and the skin for the stomach, if necessary; they seem to be able to live very comfortably, and digest their food without difficulty when turned wrong-side outward. ”

“ Every hydroid, however greatly the species may differ in external form, has a certain structural plan to which it adheres in all its modifications. The general type (Fig. 2.) may be simply described as an animal sac whose walls are composed of an inner and outer membrane. The outer wall corresponds to the skin, the inner to the lining of the stomach, in higher organisms. The simple elongated sac is not only the simplest form of hydroid, but is generally the earliest phase in the development of the more complicated forms. ”

“ The huge Rhizostoma, and the beautiful Chrysaora, common to the English coast, Carpenter tells us, are oceanic medusæ developed from a small hydroid stem. The embryo emerges in the form of a ciliated ovule, resembling some of the infusoria. One end contracts, forms a foot and attaches itself, the other sends out four tubular offshoots, as tentacles, and "the central cells melt down to form the cavity of the stomach." This hydra-like form multiplies in the ordinary way by budding, for an indefinite length of time. ”

“ Voluntary motion takes place without muscles, sensibility is present without nerves, respiration is performed without lungs, and digestion goes on without a true stomach. The sea-water which flows within and about the creature bears to it the oxygen necessary to the maintenance of vital combustion, as well as the small living creatures and comminuted organic matter which form its food. ”

“ By some unknown means the bees can distinguish a worker from a drone egg; and, if, by an oversight, a worker-egg is allowed to develop into a larva in a drone-cell, or vice versa, the bees cap over the cell with the fiat or convex cover peculiar to its inmate, without reference to the size of the cell upon which they are working. ”

“ In these the queen deposits eggs on successive days, so that, when she leads off the new swarm, another queen may be ready to take her place; and also, that if the swarm be vigorous enough to throw off several colonies, each may be provided with a leader. During this season the ordinary instincts of the workers seem reversed; they hinder the queen, if she seems so disposed, from destroying the royal pupæ contained in the cells.
A common bee, when it reaches maturity, makes its way, without help, out of the cell, and it is for some time too weak to fly. A queen, however, is guarded by the bees ”

“ Certain exceptions to this definition of vegetable life, as being exhaustive, are found in the Fungi, which germinate and grow in darkness, and it is believed are nourished in great measure by organic matter, as well as in the curious carnivorous plants, which have of late attracted so much attention. ”

“ In the hydra the sac is ejected, and a central dart is projected into the body attacked. There must be a minute poison-sac in communication with the darts, as it is found that any soft-bodied victim, released from the clasp of the tentacles, is invariably dead, no matter how short the time of its imprisonment may have been. ”

“ Finally, the whole swarm appeared to be in a violent state of excitement, and large numbers issued from the hive with the queen at their head. During the agitation, which precedes swarming, the thermometer rises from between 90° and 97° to 104°. "This heat is intolerable to bees," says Huber; "when exposed to it, they rush impetuously to the outlets of the hive, and depart." Swarming is occasioned by excessive heat, quite as much as by an overstocked hive. The initial cause of the queen's agitation is not known, but it always communicates itself to the whole swarm, whatever its cause may be. ”

“ The horny sheath, which is described by earlier writers as an excretion, is by Allman considered to be rather the result of metamorphosis of tissue. In many varieties the stem and branches of the creature are slender, horny, and pipe-shaped, and the chitinous sheath is jointed at regular intervals, the joint being a mere break in the continuity of the chitine, not a movable hinge; while the living pulp within forms a continuous body, and is invested by its sheath as the pith of a plant is invested by its stalk. ”

“ When the roving medusa has sown its wild-oats, and comes to settle down into a respectable family hydroid, it loses all these advantages belonging to its wandering life, and becomes in its later form identical with the parent ”

“ These soundings and grapplings brought from the sea-depths unmistakable proof that life in many varied and exquisite forms existed there, far away from light and vegetation, under an enormous pressure of superincumbent waters ”

“ These zoöids, which each investigator names according to his peculiar theory of scientific nomenclature, we will call nutritive and generative buds; the nutritive buds being destined for the preservation of the colony, the generative for the perpetuation of the species. The attached extremity of the animal in the fixed, or its equivalent in the free, species is called the proximal end, and the opposite extremity, which bears the two forms of buds, the distal end of the hydroid. ”

“ Intense application, together with the habit of reading late at night, by dim lamp-light, or even by the light of the moon, seriously impaired his health. At the age of fifteen he found himself not only utterly-prostrated in strength, but threatened with blindness. ”

“ Violent contests took place every day between the native and the alien bees. Aristotle mentions "a black bee which is called a thief," but Huber seems never to have heard this suggestion, and supposed them to differ from his own bees in some physical particulars. He, therefore, submitted them to Mdlle. Jurine for dissection, and she discovered not only in them, but in all workers, ovaries—a fact which entirely overturned the theory of neuters which had held its ground for so many centuries. The worker is not sexless, but is an imperfectly-developed female. ”