The article, in the original work, on this county, is almost exclusively confined to its ancient history, and its antiquities, and in the short notices which it gives on other points, it is by no means accurate. In this article, therefore, we shall attend to what is omitted or incorrect in the former.

This county possesses no natural limits, except the Ouse for a short space on the east and west sides, and a rivulet on the south-west border. It is situate between the parallels of 51.47 and 52.17 north latitude, and between 0.17 and 0.46 west longitude from Greenwich. According to the report to the Board of Agriculture, it contains 307,200 acres; according to the returns to Parliament of the poor-rates, drawn up under the inspection of Mr Rose, 275,200; and according to Dr Beeke, in his Observations on the Income Tax, 293,059. Nearly the whole of this county is situate on the eastern side of the grand ridge of the island, and consequently nearly all its waters drain off in that direction.

The face of the country is, in general, varied with small hills and valleys, and affords few extensive level tracts. The highest range of hills are the Chiltern, which cross a part, and skirt the remainder of the southern extremity of this county. This ridge frequently projects abruptly into the valleys in a striking manner. Under it is a large tract of hard, sterile land, which gives this part a dreary and uncomfortable appearance. The next most considerable range, in point of height, is of clay, crossing the county near its northern end. The next range is of sand, and enters the county on its western side, near Apsley-Guise, and passes on in a north-eastern direction. The other ranges are for the most part of alluvial clay.

Four-fifths of the surface of this county are covered with alluvial soils, which consist principally of yellow and dark coloured clays. Fuller, speaking in general terms of its soil, gives a pretty just description of it, by saying, that it is a deep clay with a belt or girdle of sand about, or rather athwart the body of it, from Woburn to Potton. This soil prevails in the north-west parts. From the south-eastern corner to the middle of the county, light loam, sand, gravel, and chalk predominate. The western part is, for the most part, flat and sandy. In the south-west, about Woburn, are large tracts of deep barren soil. Upon the gravel, in the bottoms of the vales in the sand district, there is a considerable quantity of peat, which contains a large quantity of sulphuric acid.

The uppermost stratum in Bedfordshire is a thick body of chalk, with numerous layers of flints. This advances no farther northward or north-west than Luton and Dunstable. Hard chalk, without flints, succeeds. Near the bottom of this is a very durable freestone. The upper and lower chalk strata are together about 400 feet thick. Chalk-marl succeeds the chalk. To the northward of Hockliff there are thick masses of alluvial clay. The ferruginous sand stratum of Woburn crosses the county, as has been already mentioned, from Woburn to Potton. It is about 170 or 180 feet thick. Near the bottom of it are beds of fuller's earth. This substance is found from five to seven or eight feet thick, between beds of sand or sandstone, over several hundred acres on the north-west of Woburn, both in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Formerly, the most extensive workings were in Apsley-Guise parish, in the former county; but, at present, the only pit that is used is in Buckinghamshire. The site of Bedford is formed of a stratum of clunch clay; it is the thickest of the Bedfordshire strata, and extends for several miles to the south side of the county town. In some parts of this stratum, there are beds of argillaceous schist, so impregnated with a bituminous substance as to burn like bad coal. In the immediate site of the town of Bedford are several strata of grey compact limestone, which are probably the lowest strata in the county. The strata of Bedfordshire have a pretty regular dip towards the southeast, at the rates of 1 in 50 to 1 in 80.

Amongst the most rare of the indigenous plants Rare of this county may be enumerated Lythrum hyssop. Plants, pyrolia, grass-poly, or small hedge-hyssop, which grows plentifully in the fields between Oakley and Clapham; Campanula latifolia, giant throat-wort, and Eriophorum polystachion, cotton grass, near Dunstable; Geranium phaeum, spotted cranes-bill, near Eversholt; Hyoseris minima, small swines' succory, near Aspley and Ampthill; and Ornithogalum pyrenaicum, spiked star of Bethlehem, near Eaton-Locon. Dr Abbot, who has published a very ample Flora of the indigenous plants of this county, found the Euphorbia cyparissias, considered as a doubtful native plant, growing wild in Barton-lect woods.

According to meteorological observations made at Climate. Leighton-Buzzard, the monthly mean for four years, ending the 1st of January 1804, of the barometer, was 29.520 ; of the thermometer, with a northern aspect, observed at eight o'clock in the morning, without the house, 47.2, within the house, 49.6; of rain, 1.93 inches; and of evaporation, 1.05. The most prevalent wind, during that period, was southwest by west. The principal rivers in this county are the Ouse, the Ivel, and the Ouzel. The circuitous course of the first has been much exaggerated. As it is described on Jeffries's map, which was made by a trigonometrical survey, its course does not appear to be more than 45 miles. It enters this county from Buckinghamshire, in the parish of Turvey, and, taking a winding course through fertile meadows, passes the town of Bedford, from which it becomes navigable, and makes its exit into Huntingdonshire. Its stream is remarkably slow, except in time of floods, when it is liable to great inundations. Its average depth is about ten feet. The fish of the Ouse are pike, perch, bream, chub, bleak, cray-fish, eels, dace, roach, and gudgeon. The eels are of a very large size, in great abundance, and very fine. The Ivel enters Bedfordshire near Stodfield. At Biggleswade it becomes navigable, and at Tompshird falls into the Ouse. It is particularly famous for gudgeon. The Ouzel separates this county from Buckinghamshire, in its course to Leighton-Buzzard. The Lea rises in Bedfordshire, and runs through the whole extent of Luton parish. The Grand Junction Canal touches the borders of this county for about three miles, near Leighton-Buzzard.

There are several very large estates in Bedfordshire, the principal of which belong to the Duke of Bedford, the Marquis of Bute, the Earl of Upper Ossory, Lord St John, Earl Spencer, and Mr Whitbread. The principal agricultural products are corn and butter. Much of the former is sent down the Ouse to Lynn, and the latter goes principally to London by land-carriage. This county has been long noted for its abundant produce of fine wheat and barley. The vale of Bedford is one of the most extensive corn districts. The rich dairy ground principally extends in a line, from the middle of the county to the south-east corner. In some parts of Bedfordshire, especially in the parish of Sandy, garden vegetables are raised in considerable quantities for the supply of the neighbouring towns. The agriculture of this county, it is well known, was extremely indebted to the judicious and liberal patronage and example of the late Duke of Bedford. His favourite pursuits were experimental agriculture and the breeding of cattle. For these purposes, he kept several farms in his own hand. The principal farm-yard is in Woburn park. The buildings of every kind are upon the most extensive scale, and abound in every convenience. One of the most remarkable is the room constructed for showing the sheep at the annual shearing. On the farm at Woburn is a mill for malting, thrashing, winnowing, &c. The cultivation of woad, mentioned by former writers as carried on to a considerable extent in Bedfordshire, has long been laid aside. On what are called the "woodland soils," and on the colder parts of the alluvial clay, particularly the steep sides of the hills, in the northern and middle parts of the county, there are between 6000 and 7000 acres of very old wood. There are also about 500 acres on the sand, where also large plantations of fir have been made. A considerable part of the timber that is felled is sent to the sea coast by the Ouse.

The principal manufactures are the plaiting of straw, and making it into bonnets, &c. and threadlace. The straw manufacture prevails, and latterly has much increased, in the neighbourhood of Dunstable and Toddington, and on the borders of Hertfordshire. The employment is deemed more healthy than that of lace-making, as the straw may be plaited by persons standing or walking. The earnings, even of those who make the coarse plait, are higher than those of the lace-makers; and the profit of making the fine plait is very considerable. Threadlace, formerly known by the name of bone-lace, was for a long time the staple manufacture of this county; but latterly it has given way to the manufacture of straw; and has farther declined in consequence of the general introduction of cottonlace. It is now made only in a very few villages in the neighbourhood of Buckinghamshire, and in the town of Bedford. It is not so fine in its texture as the lace made in some parts of Buckinghamshire. The average day's-work of an adult, when the manufacture flourished, was rather more than a shilling a-day; the children earning from threepence to sixpence. The posture in which the manufacturers sit, the sedentary nature of the employment, and the habit of working together in crowded rooms, ill ventilated, give the manufacturers a weak and sickly appearance. In the neighbourhood of Dunstable, there is a whiting manufactory, which employs a few people.

In the year 1377, the number of persons in this Population county who were charged to a poll-tax, from which the clergy, children, and paupers were exempted, amounted to 20,239. This tax was levied not long after a fatal pestilence. In the year 1700, the total population was estimated at 48,500; in 1750, 53,900. By the returns to Parliament, in 1801, the number of inhabited houses was 11,888; of uninhabited 185; the number of families was 13,980; the number of persons chiefly employed in agriculture was 18,766; the persons chiefly employed in manufactures, trade, and handicraft, 13,816; and persons to whom no occupation was assigned, and children, was 28,789: the total number of resident inhabitants was 63,393; of whom 30,523 were males, and 32,870 females. The population, in 1811, had increased to 70,213; of whom 33,171 were males, and 37,042 females; the number of inhabited houses was 18,286; of families 14,927; of houses building 139; of houses uninhabited 219—the number of families employed in agriculture was 9431; and the annual value of the land at rack-rent was nearly L.280,000. The number of families chiefly employed in trade, manufactures, &c. was 4153; and the amount of annual profits was rather more than L.94,000. The number of people to a square mile was 171; the annual proportions of baptisms was 1 to 32 persons; of burials, 1 to 56; and of marriages, 1 to 126.

In the year 1776, the amount of the poor-rates raised in this county was L.18,193; in the year 1784, L.22,638; and in the year 1803, L.47,484. This was at the rate of 8s. 9 1/2d. in the pound, on a rental of L.248,600, or 14s. 9 1/2d. a head, on the whole population. The total expenditure for the poor, in 1803, was L.38,070; nearly L.10,000 being ex- pended in law-suits, county-rates, &c.; L.37,944 was distributed to 7276 persons, or 1 in every 8-4th of the whole population, the average allowance being 2s. a week. Of these paupers, 674 were wholly maintained in work-houses, at the average expense of L.12, 10s. 5½d. each annually, or 4s. 9¾d. per week. There were at that time 2370 persons associated in 75 Friendly Societies: eight parishes in the county had schools of industry, in which 196 children were taught to work. Only an incomplete return has as yet been made to Parliament of the poor-rates, or other rate or rates raised in Bedfordshire, in the year ending 25th March 1815; six parishes out of the 140 having made no return; but it appears, from the return actually made, that 134 parishes paid, at that time, L.69,464, 6s. 3¾d.

Remains of the earliest style of Gothic architecture are to be seen in this county, in the nave of Elstow church, in the west part of Folmeham church, and in the west end of Dunstable church. Of the succeeding style of Gothic architecture, which prevailed during the fourteenth century, few examples are to be met with in Bedfordshire. Wimington church, however, though small, is an elegant specimen of it, and appears never to have been altered. Several of the Bedfordshire churches are in the latter style of Gothic architecture, which prevailed during the fifteenth, and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries. The churches of Northill, Wimington, Mayton, Eaton-Socon, Odill, Biggleswode, and St Paul's at Bedford, are in this style.

In the original work, there are notices of the history of this county till the time of Alfred. Nothing important occurred in it for several centuries afterwards. During the civil wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, it presents no remarkable events, probably in consequence of the destruction of its castles by King John, in his march northward. But Bedfordshire was one of the first counties that associated against Charles I.; and Lord Clarendon observes, that this was one of the counties in which the King had not any visible party, nor one fixed quarter.

To the notice of the town of Bedford, in the original work, some particulars may be added. It is 50 miles north-west by north from London; the latitude of St Paul's church, according to the government trigonometrical survey, is 52° 8', 8", 8', north; and its longitude 0° 27', 43", 3', west of Greenwich Observatory, or 1° 50", 9', in time. The right of election is vested in the burgesses, freemen, and inhabiting householders not receiving alms; their number is about 1400. Besides its parish-churches, its public buildings, are a county-infirmary, a county-jail, and bridewell, a town-jail, and a county-hall. It is situate rather to the north of the centre of the county, and in the midst of a very rich tract of land, called the Vale of Bedford. The Ouse is navigable from the Eastern Sea to this town. By its situation, on this river, the inhabitants carry on a considerable trade in forwarding the corn of the adjacent fertile country to Lynn; and in importing from thence coals, timber, wine, and groceries. The inundations of the Ouse have been more frequent and destructive latterly than they used to be, in consequence, it is supposed, of the many newly inclosed parishes, which drain into the river. There is sometimes a stagnation of water in the meadows of the Ouse, near Bedford, to the depth of 12 or 14 feet.

Thread-lace is the principal manufacture of the place. According to the Parliamentary returns of 1801, of 3948 inhabitants, which it then contained, there were 2236 females. This great disproportion between the sexes has been justly ascribed to the will of Sir William Harper, who, in the year 1561, bequeathed 134 acres of land in the parish of St Andrew, Holborn, to the corporation of Bedford, for the support of a grammar-school, and the apportioning young women of the town upon marriage. The rent of this estate being now between L.4000 and L.5000, it may well be supposed that young women from the vicinity of Bedford are drawn into the town in the hope of getting apportioned and married. In 1811, the population of the town consisted of 2057 males, and 2548 females; the inhabited houses were 940, and the families inhabiting them 1099.

The principal market at Bedford, held on Saturday, on the north side of the river, is a considerable mart for corn. The Monday market, on the south side of the river, is chiefly for pigs. There are six annual fairs, besides a fair held in the vicinity at St Leonard's Farm.

It is generally supposed that Bedford is the Bedanford of the Saxon Chronicle, where the battle was fought between Cuthwulf and the Britons in 572; it is said to have been the burial place of Offa, king of the Mercians. According to Doomsday-book, it was taxed as half a hundred, both for soldiers and shipping. Before the Conquest, there was a collegiate church here, dedicated to St Paul. The celebrated John Bunyan was porter of an independent meeting-house in Mill Lane, from 1671 till his death in 1688. His memory is much revered by the congregation, and the chair in which he used to sit is preserved as a relic in the vestry. The Moravians have had an establishment at Bedford ever since the year 1745.

See Bachelor's Agricultural Report of Bedfordshire; —Beauties of England and Wales, Vol. 1. —Lyson's Magna Britannia, Vol. 1. —Smith's Map of the Strata of England, with a Memoir. (c.)

B E E.

The Bee, from its singular instincts, its active industry, and the useful products resulting from its labours, has, from the remotest times, attracted the attention, not only of naturalists, but of mankind in general. No nation upon earth has had so many historians as this remarkable tribe of insects. The patience and sagacity of the naturalist have had an ample field for exercise in the study of their struc- ture, physiology, and domestic economy. Their preservation and increase have been objects of assiduous care to the agriculturist; and their reputed perfection of policy and government, have long been the theme of admiration, and have afforded copious materials for argument and allusion to the poet and the moralist in every age. It is a subject that has been celebrated and adorned by the muse of Virgil, as well as illustrated by the philosophic genius of Aristotle. Cicero and Pliny report that Aristomachus devoted himself during sixty years to the study of these insects; and Philiscus is said to have retired into a desert wood, that he might pursue his observations on them without interruption. A prodigious number of authors have written express treatises on bees; periodical works have been published relating exclusively to their management and economy; and learned societies have been established for the sole purpose of conducting researches on this subject. The most celebrated association of this kind is the Société des Abeilles, founded about fifty years ago in Little Bautzen, a village in Upper Lusatia, under the auspices of the Elector of Saxony. Its labours, as we shall presently find, have enriched the science with a number of valuable discoveries.

In so complicated a branch of natural history, the application of the difficult art of observing correctly, and of the cautious processes of induction, cannot be effected without laborious and long continued efforts. But, on the subject of bees, the inquirer after truth had, besides, many obstacles to encounter, from the very general diffusion of errors, which had been transmitted without due examination from one author to another. The history of the opinions of successive writers, will sufficiently prove how gradual and how slow has been the advancement of real knowledge in what concerns these insects, and will teach us to estimate the value of that which we at length possess, as being the result of the labour of ages, and as being extorted from nature by indefatigable and persevering exertions. So great an accumulation of curious and interesting facts, indeed, has accrued to us from the researches of Swammerdam, Maraldi, Reaumur, Schirach, and Huber, as to constitute almost a new science. Many of these have been discovered subsequent to the time of the compilation of the article Bee in the Encyclopedia. It will therefore be proper, in this place, to give a connected and systematic account of the natural history of this remarkable insect. For the details of the external characters and distinctions of species, we shall refer to what has been already stated in the above article, and in that of Entomology. The principal features of their internal conformation will be described when treating of the particular functions to which they are more immediately subservient; and our descriptions will apply, more especially, to the common and best known species, the Apis mellifica, which is the one particularly prized on account of the rich products it affords.

The economy of bees comprehends so wide a field of inquiry, the different parts of which are so connected and dependant upon one another, that it is impossible to treat of them distinctly, without supposing the reader to possess some general acquaintance with the history of these insects. We shall, therefore, premise a brief account of the different sorts of bees inhabiting the hive, and of the respective offices of each. We shall then proceed to consider their comparative physiology; under which head we shall state the leading particulars relating to their nutrition, secretion, respiration, progressive motion, external senses and instincts. We shall next follow them in their different labours, from the period when the swarm has settled in a new habitation; we shall detail the complex structure of their hives,—their curious processes of architecture,—the pains they bestow on rearing their progeny and in sending forth new swarms; and this will lead us to the subject of the fecundation of the queens, and the massacre of the drones. After having thus given an account of their usual condition, we shall, in the last place, describe the result of several experiments and observations, which have been made when they were placed in unusual circumstances; experiments which have exhibited many interesting features of their character, and have thrown considerable light on the whole of their history, as well as suggested various practical and economic applications in the management of these insects.

The leading feature in their history, and one which distinguishes them from almost all insects, is their singular distribution into three different kinds, constituting, to all appearance, so many different modifications of sex. The drone, which is characterized by a thicker body, a round head, a more flattened shape, and more obtusely terminated abdomen, within which are contained the male organs of generation, has been admitted as the male of the species. It is distinguished, also, by the absence of a sting, and by the humming noise that accompanies its flight. The queen-bee, which is larger than any of the others, has the abdomen of greater length, and is provided with a sting, and with two ovaria of considerable size, is unequivocally recognised as the female. The working-bees compose the third class, and are distinguished by the smallness of their size, their lengthened proboscis, the peculiar structure of their legs and thighs, which are adapted to the collection of certain materials collected from vegetables, and by the apparent absence of every trace of generative organs,—we say apparent absence, because, as will be hereafter stated, rudiments of ovaria have been very lately discovered to exist, which, however, are not perceptible without a very minute and careful dissection. Till within a few years, the working-bees were regarded as animals deprived of sex, and were accordingly termed neuters or mules. It is these which perform all the laborious offices for the community,—which construct the interior of their habitation,—which explore the country in search of nourishment and other materials,—which collect and bring them to the hive, and apply them to different purposes; it is they who assiduously attend upon the queen, and supply all her wants,—who defend the hive from the attacks of predators,—and who carry on hostilities against the various enemies of the tribe. The life of the females is chiefly engrossed with the duties of laying eggs, and conducting the colonies, which, at certain periods, emigrate from the parent state. The drones, producing neither wax nor honey, and depending on the rest for their subsistence, are idle spectators of these labours. They appear to be formed only for the momentary, but important duty of impregnation; since they perish when this purpose is accomplished. There is commonly only one perfect queen existing at a time within each hive; and she appears to be treated by all the other bees with every mark of affection and of deference. The number of labourers is very different in different hives; sometimes there are only a few thousands, at other times, from twenty to forty, or even fifty thousand. The drones, even in the spring, seldom compose more than one-thirtieth, or one-fortieth of the whole; and, at other seasons, there are none to be found in the hive. In order to form some estimate of the number of bees which can occupy a certain space, Mr Hunter counted what number of drowned bees could be contained in an alehouse pint, and found it to be 2160; so that if a swarm were to fill two quarts, their numbers would be nearly 9000. Reaumur, with the same view of ascertaining their numbers, employed the more accurate method of weighing them; he found that a collection of them, weighing one ounce, consisted of 336 bees; and, therefore, that 16 ounces, or one pound, would consist of 5376 bees.

Notwithstanding these differences in conformation, instincts, and offices between the queen-bee and the workers, it is now established, upon the most incontrovertible evidence, that they both originally proceed from the same kind of larva, and that the queen-bee lays only two kinds of eggs, the one destined to produce the drone, the others capable of being converted, according to circumstances, either into a worker or a queen. It has been proved that the former, although exhibiting no appearance of sexual organs on a superficial examination, are in reality females, and have the rudiments of these organs, which, from their not being developed, are incapable of exercising their proper functions. The principal facts from which these conclusions were derived have already been briefly stated in the article BEE in the Encyclopaedia, but the evidence was at that time scarcely sufficient to carry complete conviction to the mind. It may be remarked, that the idea of the working-bees being radically females had been given out long ago by Dr Warder, in his Monarchy of Bees, in which he terms them "True Amazons;" but no attention had been paid to his opinion. The real merit of this great discovery, which affords the key to a multitude of hitherto inexplicable facts, unquestionably belongs to Mr Schirach, vicar of Little Bautzen, the Secretary of the Lusatian Society, to which we formerly adverted. When first announced to the world, it was received with suspicion by the greater number of naturalists, and with complete incredulity by others. It was, indeed, at variance with the whole tenor of the observations of Swammerdam, Maraldi, and Reaumur. Wilhelmi, the brother-in-law of Schirach, though an eye witness to the experiments from which he had deduced this theory, for a long time refused to admit the doctrine; but became at length one of its most strenuous supporters. It is noticed in a vein of sarcastic ridicule by Mr John Hunter, in his otherwise excellent paper on bees in the Philosophical Transactions. Needham wrote a memoir for the Imperial Academy of Brussels, in 1777, for the express purpose of refuting it; and he then inveighs in strong language against those naturalists who had deigned to give it the least countenance. Mr Key, in the Bath Society Papers, declares that he made experiments on this subject for eight years, without obtaining a single result in conformity to Schirach's views. Bonnet, after exercising a laudable scepticism, and making a diligent inquiry, in which he displays a genuine spirit of philosophy, yielded a reluctant assent. But the truth of the doctrine has since been placed beyond the reach of controversy by multiplied series of observations and experiments in different parts of Europe; and more especially by the recent investigations of Mr Huber of Geneva. We shall not at present enter into the detail of proofs, because their force will be better appreciated when other particulars belonging to the history of the bee have been explained.

In considering the physiology of the bee, the first Nutrition function that claims our notice is that of Nutrition. The food of bees is principally of two kinds; namely, the fluid secretions of vegetables contained the Food in the nectarea of the flowers, and the dust of the Bees. antherae, which has been termed by botanists the pollen, but which, when collected by the bees, has received a variety of appellations, such as farina, bee-bread, raw wax (cire-brute), &c. Occasionally, however, we find bees feeding upon other saccharine substances besides honey, such as honey-dew, treacle, syrup, &c.

The organs by which they collect food are extremely complex, for they comprise instruments adapted to the reception of liquid aliment, as well as those fitted for the division of solid materials. Reaumur has given the most elaborate description of these organs, in which he has corrected some errors that Swammerdam had fallen into. For the purpose of taking up fluids they are provided, in common with all hymenopterous insects, with a long and flexible proboscis or trunk, which may be considered as a Proboscis. lengthened tongue, though, strictly speaking, it is formed by a prolongation of the under lip. It is not tubular, as Swammerdam had supposed, but solid throughout, and the minute depression at its extremity is not the aperture of any canal through which liquids can be absorbed. Cuvier, in his Leçons d'Anatomie Comparée, has not marked this distinguishing feature in the proboscis of the bee, but speaks of it in common with the tubular trunks of the other hymenoptera, and describes its aperture as being situated in the lower part. But Reaumur has very satisfactorily shown that the trunk of the bee performs strictly the office of a tongue, and not that of a tube for suction, for when it takes up honey or other fluid aliment, the under or the upper surfaces are more immediately applied to it, and rolled from side to side, and the bee thus licks up what adheres to it, while the extremity of the trunk is frequently not applied at all to the substance ta- ken up. The trunk is supported on a pedicle which admits of being bent back, or propelled forwards, and thus can retract or stretch out the trunk to a considerable extent. Protection is given to it by a double sheath; the external consisting of two scales furnished by the expansion of one of the portions of the labial palpi, and the internal, formed by the prolongation of the two external portions of the jaw. The whole member thus consists of five principal parts, on which account Fabricius termed it lingua quinquedisa.

Mandibles. For the purpose of mechanically dividing solid materials, the mouth is furnished with two strong mandibles and four palpi; they are but little employed in eating, but are of great use in enabling the insect to seize and break down hard substances for other purposes. In the working-bee all these parts are of larger dimensions than in the other kinds. The teeth are two in number, and have the form of concave scales with sharp edges; they are fixed to the ends of the jaws, and play horizontally as in other insects. Reaumur describes and delineates a large aperture above the root of the proboscis, which is so surrounded with fleshy parts as not to be readily seen, unless the proboscis be extended and bent downwards. This he considers as the mouth or orifice of the gullet; on the upper side of which, and of course opposite to the root of the proboscis, a small fleshy and pointed organ is seen, which he regards as the tongue, assisting in the deglutition of the food. Through this orifice, it is presumed, all the aliment, whether liquid or solid, passes; the former being conveyed to it by the trunk, which, by its contractile power, presses forward the fluids it has collected between itself and the inner sheath, and the latter being received directly after its comminution by the teeth, behind which it is situated. Latreille, however, whose authority is great on a point of this nature, thinks that Reaumur has deceived himself with regard to such an aperture, and disbelieves its existence. He conceives that the food simply passes on by the sides of the tongue, finding its way from thence into the oesophagus, and so on to the stomach.

The bee has two stomachs: The first is a large transparent membranous bag, pointed in front, and swelling out into two pouches behind. It performs an office, in some respects, analogous to that of the crop in birds; for it receives, and retains for a time, the fluid of the nectarea, which does not appear to differ, in any respect, from honey. Mr Houter observes, that, whatever time the contents of this reservoir may be retained, he never found them altered, so as to give the idea of digestion having taken place. The coats of this reservoir are muscular, by which means it is capable of throwing up the honey into the mouth, so that it is regurgitated into the honey cells, or imparted to other bees. None of it ever passes out from the extremity of the trunk, as Swammerdam had believed. For the purpose of digestion, a second stomach is provided, which takes its origin from the middle of the two posterior loises of the former, and is of a lengthened cylindrical shape. Its communication with the intestine is not direct, but takes place by a projecting or inverted pylorus, thickest at its most projecting part, with a very small opening in the centre, of a peculiar construction. This inward projecting part is easily seen through the coats of the reservoir, especially if full of honey. A similar kind of structure takes place at the communication of the first with the second stomachs, and, having the properties of a valve, must effectually prevent all regurgitation from the latter into the former.

The pollen of flowers, which is the other principal article of food, was shown by Swammerdam to consist of an infinite number of small particles, generally of a globular shape, each of which is found to be a small capsule, enclosing the still finer dust or fecundating principle, destined to be shed on the pistils for the purpose of germination. Geoffroy has given a memoir, published in the Collection Academique des Sciences, containing a minute description of the shapes of these capsules, taken from different flowers. The working-bees, by means of the pencil of hair which grows on the tarsi, first collect a certain quantity of pollen, which they knead together into a ball, and place it in the concave space which is situated at the middle joint of the hinder feet, and has been termed the basket. The surrounding rows of hairs keep the ball from falling off. In order to gather larger quantities at once, the bees are sometimes observed to roll their bodies on the flower, and then brushing off the pollen which adheres to them with their feet, form it into two masses, which they dispose of as before mentioned; and it is said, that, in moist weather, when the particles of pollen cannot be readily made to cohere together, they return to their hive, dusted all over with pollen, which they then brush off with their feet. They are often obliged to tear open the capsules which contain the pollen, in order to procure a supply of this substance, when it has not yet been shed by the flowers.

Pollen is yielded by flowers during the spring in such abundance, that the bees of a single hive will often bring back one pound, or even more, in a day. Some agriculturists have accordingly imagined, that the vegetation of some plants might be endangered from this great consumption of the fecundating principle by insects in general; for other insects, besides bees, seek it with great avidity. But this fear has been proved to be totally without foundation, and the practice of destroying bees in order to prevent this imaginary danger, is therefore as useless as it is barbarous. It would appear, indeed, that so far from obstructing the fecundation of plants, the labours of the bee have often tended materially to promote it, by the agitation which they gave to the flower, and by transporting the pollen from one flower to another. In this manner may we account for the number of hybrid flowers that are met with near the haunts of bees.

It has been shown very clearly by Huber, in a paper in the Journal de Physique, that pollen is peculiarly the food of the young bees, and is collected by the working-bees with this intention. Reaumur, however, asserts that he has seen adult bees devour pollen. Swammerdam, who conceived the trunk to be tubular, rejected the idea that pollen could ever be the food of bees, as the globules of which it con- sists are incapable of entering an orifice so minute as that which appears at the extremity of the trunk, and which, as he was unacquainted with the real mouth, he thought was the only passage to the stomach. Latreille, who does not admit the existence of the large mouth described by Reaumur, states that the mandibles lay hold of the pollen, and carry it to the base of the trunk, from whence it finds its way into the œsophagus, by the sides of that organ.

On the nature of Honey-Dew, and the consumption of it by bees, a sufficient account has already been given in the Encyclopædia, under that article.

An abundant supply of water is essential to the healthy condition of bees. They consume a large quantity, and often stop to drink at the edge of stagnant pools, and seem even to prefer putrid and urinous waters to purer streams, as if their saline and pungent qualities were grateful to them.

It has been long the opinion that wax was but a slight modification of pollen, which required for this conversion merely the application of a certain pressure, and a kind of kneading by the feet of the bees. Many naturalists, such as Bernard de Jussieu, had persuaded themselves that the dust of the stamina of flowers contained wax ready formed, as one of its ingredients; and quoted the following experiment in proof of this opinion: If the minute grains of pollen be put into water, they gradually swell, till they at length burst, at which moment a small jet of an oily liquor will be perceived, which floats on the water without mixing with it. But Reaumur had attempted in vain to extract any thing like wax from dust of the antheræ; and, indeed, an attention to the chemical properties of these two substances would have sufficiently pointed out their essential differences. From the upper surface of the leaves of many kinds of trees, a substance has, indeed, been obtained, which possesses all the qualities of bees' wax; but nothing like it can be extracted from pollen. Reaumur was persuaded that the pollen was elaborated in the second stomach of the bee; and thrown up into the mouth in the form of a white foam, which, by exposure to the air, hardened, and became wax; and that the bee took advantage of its soft state to apply it in the building of the combs. So circumstantial an account, given to us by a scrupulous observer of facts, appeared to be perfectly satisfactory, and was acquiesced in by naturalists in general. But it has since been completely proved by the researches of Duchet, of Hunter, and of Huber, but principally by the latter, that wax is a secretion from the abdomen of the bee; and that it depends not at all on the pollen which the insect may consume, but on the quantity of honey or other saccharine substance which it receives into the stomach. The first step in this discovery was made by one of the members of the Lusatian Society, whose name has not been preserved. It was mentioned in a letter of Mr Wilhelm to Bonnet in August 1768, in which he says that wax, instead of being rejected by the mouth, exudes from the rings which inclose the posterior part of the body. Of this we may satisfy ourselves by drawing out the bee from the cell in which it is working with wax, by means of the point of a fine needle; and we may perceive, in proportion as the body is elongated, that the wax will make its appearance under the rings, in the form of small scales. Mr Duchet, in his Culture des Abeilles, gives a full statement of the principal circumstances attending the production of wax, which he very justly ascribes to the conversion of honey into this substance in the body of the bee. These facts appear to have been entirely overlooked till the subject was again brought forward by Mr John Hunter, in his paper in the Philosophical Transactions for 1792. Wildman, however, had cursorily remarked, that portions of wax, in the form of scales, and which he conceived must have been moulded on the body of the bee, are sometimes found at the bottom of the hive. M. Huber was prosecuting his inquiries on this subject at the same period with Mr Hunter, and discovered, in 1793, the existence of regular receptacles, or pouches, from the coats of which the wax is secreted, and within which it accumulates till its edges raise the scales, and become apparent externally. These plates of wax are withdrawn by the bee itself, or some of its fellow-labourers, and is applied in a manner hereafter to be described.

Huber has shown, by a series of well conducted experiments, that, in a natural state, the quantity of wax secreted is in proportion to the consumption of honey; but that an equal, or even greater quantity, will be formed, if the bee be fed on a solution of sugar in water. Warmth and rest promote this process of secretion; for the bees, after feeding plentifully on saccharine food, hang together in a cluster, without moving, for several hours, at the end of which time, large plates of wax are found under the abdominal rings. This happened when bees were confined and restricted from any other sort of nourishment; while those that were fed on pollen and fruits alone, did not produce any wax. It appears also from his researches, that the formation of wax is the office of a particular set of bees, which may be distinguished from the rest, and particularly from those that nurse the young larvæ, by the greater size and more cylindrical shape of their abdomen. Dissection also shows that their stomachs are more capacious. Having already given the details of the experiments of Huber on this subject, in the article Entomology, in the Encyclopædia, there is no occasion to dwell on them farther. In the second volume of Huber's Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles, he describes minutely the anatomy of the pouches or receptacles for the wax, which are parts peculiar to the working-bees, being totally absent in the males and queens. It is a structure that had escaped the keen eyes of Swammerdam, and has not been noticed by any subsequent anatomist. The cavities are lined with a membrane, which presents a number of folds, forming a hexagonal net-work, not unlike the appearance in the second stomach of ruminant quadripeds, and evidently destined to perform the office of secretion.

Among the secretions peculiar to the bee, the poison which is poured into the wounds made by the sting deserves to be noticed. But for an account of this, as well as of the organ itself, we shall refer the reader to the article Bee, Sect. 2. As it is well known that no organs for the circulation of blood are provided in insects, this function must be effected by means totally different from those which are adopted in the higher classes of the animal kingdom. As the blood, or fluid corresponding to the blood, cannot be presented to the air in any separate organ, the air must be conducted to the blood, wherever such a fluid is met with. For this purpose, tracheae or air-tubes, having several external openings, or spiracles, are made to ramify like arteries, and are distributed in an infinite number of branches to every part of the body. The analogy of other insects might perhaps be admitted as sufficient evidence that bees respire atmospheric air, the constant renewal of which is essentially necessary to the continuance of the vital functions. It is, however, not always safe to trust to analogical reasoning in subjects of natural history; and direct evidence is, in all cases, to be preferred when it can be obtained. We must, therefore, consider as valuable, the complete series of experiments on the respiration of bees, that have been lately given to the world by Huber, to whom we already owe so large a portion of the information we possess with regard to these insects. We might, indeed, have anticipated, with the strongest probability, many of the results to which these experiments have led; but there are others which are quite unexpected, and possess as much interest as of novelty.

The condition of a hive of bees, in which many thousand individuals, full of animation and activity, are crowded together in the very small space of one or two cubic feet, having no communication with the external air but by means of a small aperture in the lowest part, which entrance is frequently obstructed by a throng of bees, that are passing in and out during sultry weather, is of all possible conditions the one least favourable to the renewal of heated air. The most crowded theatres or hospitals are not to be compared with it in point of closeness. Direct experiment, indeed, shows that the combustion of a taper could not be carried on in so limited a space, for Mr Huber found that in a glass ball of the same dimensions as the hive, and with a similar aperture, the taper went out in a few minutes. So great was the difficulty of explaining the respiration of bees under these circumstances, that Mr Huber was led to examine into the truth of the opinion, that respiration was equally necessary to bees as to other insects. The results were unequivocal. They perish speedily in the vacuum of the air-pump. They are easily drowned by placing them so that the spiracles on the corset are under water; but revive easily when they are dried. The action of the spiracles is, in this experiment, rendered manifest by the escape of bubbles of air from each of their orifices. When a number of bees are confined in a bottle accurately closed, they exhibit unequivocal symptoms of distress, and fall into complete asphyxia. These changes occur more rapidly when they are placed in any gas which contains no admixture of oxygen, such as carbonic acid, hydrogenous and azotic gases. When rendered torpid by cold, and respiration thereby suspended, these effects do not take place. All these effects are more considerable in adult bees than in the larvae; though they are also distinctly exhibited in the latter. Suffocation is retarded if the proportion of oxygen be greater than in atmospheric air, and it may be averted altogether by a continual renewal of oxygen. It was ascertained by the endometer, that the same changes were produced on the air as in the respiration of other animals; namely, the subtraction of oxygen, and the addition of an equal volume of carbonic acid gas.

Yet, on examining the air of the hive itself, it was found scarcely to differ in purity from atmospheric air. It was at one time conjectured that some of the contents of the hive, such as the pollen, the honey, or the wax, might have some power of evolving oxygen, so as to afford the requisite supply of this gas. Experiments, however, proved that they had no such power. Amidst so great an uncertainty, it was thought worth while to ascertain whether bees might not exert some unknown process, by which oxygen was generated in the hive itself. If this were true, they could support life, although all communication with the external air were intercepted. A hive was selected, having glass sides so as to allow of the observer's seeing what was passing in the interior, and the entrance was completely closed. In a quarter of an hour, the bees became sensible of their situation, and showed great uneasiness; all business was suspended; an extraordinary agitation, accompanied by a remarkable noise, prevailed in every quarter. All the bees were seen beating their wings with the same rapidity as in flying. They were thus incessantly occupied during ten minutes. Their motions became then more languid, and, after being utterly exhausted, they fell in succession to the bottom of the hive, till every one of them was in a state of complete asphyxia. It is remarkable that, at this period, the temperature of the hive, which had been previously at 95° of Fahrenheit, suddenly cooled down to that of the external air. On opening the door and the top of the hive, and establishing a current of air through it, the bees were soon restored to animation.

It was proved by this experiment, that the air is renewed through the small opening which serves as a ventilator to the hive. By suspending light substances near the entrance, the existence of different currents of air was rendered manifest. After much reflection, it occurred that the violent agitation of the wings might have some influence in procuring this renewal of air. This conjecture was confirmed by an experiment with a glass bell, to the aperture of which an apparatus was fitted, consisting of a small ventilator, which could be moved rapidly round by machinery. When the ventilator was set in motion, the air within could support the combustion of a candle for an unlimited time. Observation further showed, that some bees are actually always employed in the office of ventilating the hive; they vibrate their wings with great vigour and constancy, producing so rapid a movement of them, that they cannot be seen except in the two extremities of the arc of vibration, which is at least one of 90°. While thus imitating the actions of flying, they fasten themselves with their feet to the floor of the hive, so that the whole effect of that impulse which, were they at liberty, would carry them forwards with considerable velocity, is exerted on the air, which is therefore driven backwards in a powerful current. Some bees occasionally perform these ventilating motions on the outside of the hive, near the entrance, but a still greater number are employed in this office within doors; sometimes twenty are thus occupied at once, and each bee continues its motions for a certain time, occasionally for nearly half an hour, and is then relieved by another, who takes its place. This is the occasion of that humming sound which is constantly heard from the interior of the hive when the bees are not in a state of torpidity. But it is often heard with even more than usual loudness in the depth of winter. The warmth of the sun's rays, however, always occasions an increased activity among the ventilating bees. The immediate cause of these actions is probably some impression made on their organs by the presence of vitiated air: for a bee may be made to ventilate itself, by placing near it substances which have to them an unpleasant odour, such as spirit of wine, or oil of turpentine.

The connection between an active respiration and a high temperature is remarkably exemplified in bees, among which, in consequence of their collecting together in large numbers, the heat is not so easily dissipated, and admits also of being easily ascertained by the thermometer. Mr Hunter found it to vary from 73° to 84° of Fahrenheit: and Mr Huber observed it on some occasions to rise suddenly from about 92° to above 104°.

Bees are well fitted, by their structure, for rapid flight through the air. They possess great muscular strength in proportion to their size, and their indefatigable activity in the different labours of the hive is truly astonishing. Aristotle and Pliny have pretended that, during high winds, they endeavour to steady their flight by holding a small stone with their feet, by way of ballast. This assertion has been shown, both by Swammerdam and Reamur, to be erroneous, in as far as it applied to the common bee; but there are other species, which build nests with stones and other hard materials, and which, while transporting them for this purpose, were probably mistaken for the honey-bee.

The physiology of the external senses must necessarily be very imperfectly understood, in a class of animals of a nature so remote from our own species. The infinite diversity of characters presented to us by the different tribes of insects, as well as of other animals, naturally suggest the idea that external objects produce, on their sentient organs, impressions widely different from what they communicate to ourselves. The notions we form of their senses must not only be liable to great inaccuracy, but must often be totally inadequate representations of the truth. A more fine organization, and more subtle perceptions, would alone suffice to extend the sphere of their ordinary senses to an inconceivable degree, as the telescope and the microscope have with us extended the powers of vision. But they possess, in all probability, other organs, appropriated to unknown kinds of impressions, and which must open to them avenues to knowledge of various kinds, to which we must ever remain total strangers. Art has with us supplied many elaborate modes of bringing within our cognizance some of the properties of matter, which nature has not immediately furnished us with the means of detecting. But who will compare our thermometers, electrosopes, or hygrometers, however elaborately constructed, with those refined instruments, with which the lower classes, and particularly insects, appear to be so liberally provided? The antennae, which are so universally met with in this class of animals, are doubtless organs of the greatest importance in conveying impressions from without. Their continual motion, the constant use which is made of them in examining objects, the total derangement in the instincts of those insects which have been deprived of them, point them out as exquisite organs of more than one sense. To impressions of touch, arising from the immediate contact of bodies, they are highly sensible; but their motions evidently show that they are affected by objects at some distance. They are no doubt alive to all the tremulous motions of the surrounding air, and probably communicate perceptions of some of its other qualities. Composed of a great number of articulations, they are exceedingly flexible in every direction, and can readily embrace the outline of any body that the bee wishes to examine, however small its diameter, and of following all its movements. It is by means of these instruments that bees are enabled to execute so many works in the interior of the hive, from which the light must be totally excluded. Aided by these, it builds its combs, pours honey into its magazines, feeds the larvae, and ministers to all their wants, which it discovers and judges of solely by this species of touch.

The antennae appear also to be the principal means employed for mutual communication of impressions. The different modes of contact constitute a sort of language which appears to be susceptible of a great variety of modifications, and to be capable of supplying at once every species of information for which they have occasion. It is in this way alone that they satisfy themselves of the presence of their queen, or communicate to others the alarming intelligence that she has disappeared.

The sense residing in the antennae appears to be, Vision, on many occasions, supplementary to that of vision, which in bees, as in other insects, is less perfect than in the larger animals. During the night, therefore, they are chiefly guided in their movements by the former of these senses. This will sufficiently appear from observing by moon-light the mode in which the bees guard the entrance of the hive against the intrusion of moths which flutter in the neighbourhood. They act as vigilant sentinels, performing continual rounds near this important post, extending their antennae to the utmost, and moving them alternately to the right and to the left. Woe to the unfortunate moth that comes within their reach. Aware of its danger, and of the defective sight of the bees, the moths adroitly avoid the slightest contact, and endeavour to insinuate themselves between the bees, so as to get unperceived in- to the hive, where they riot upon the honey which they find.

If bees require full day-light for the exercise of vision, it must, at the same time, be acknowledged, that, when they are so assisted, they appear to enjoy this sense in great perfection. A bee will recognise its habitation from great distances, and distinguish it at once from many others in a numerous apiary. It passes through the air in a straight line towards its object with extreme rapidity. On quitting the hive, it flies towards the field which is most in flower; and as soon as it has determined on its course, it takes as direct a line as a ball issuing from a musket. When it has collected sufficient provision, it rises in the air to discover its hive, and then darts forward with the velocity of an arrow, and with unerring precision in its aim.

Their perceptions of heat and cold, which are generally referred to the sense of touch, appear to be extremely delicate. In several experiments of Huber's, the influence of the rays of the sun excited them to a vigorous action of the wings. It is well known, that great cold reduces them to a state of torpor, and inferior degrees of cold are evidently unpleasant to them. They show by their conduct that they are sensible of alterations in the state of the weather for some time before we can perceive them. Sometimes, when working with great assiduity, they will suddenly desist from their labours; none will stir out of the hive, while all the working-bees that are abroad hurry home in crowds, and press forward so as to obstruct the entrance of the hive. Often when they are thus warned of the approach of bad weather, we can distinguish no alteration in the state of the atmosphere. Gathering clouds sometimes produce this effect on them; but perhaps they possess some species of hygrometrical sense, unconnected with any impression of vision. It is alleged that no bee is ever caught in a sudden shower, unless from some cause it has wandered very far from the hive, or been disabled by some accident from returning to it. There is reason for thinking, however, that much exaggeration has prevailed in the statements of authors as to the extent of this kind of foresight. Huber supposes that it is the rapid diminution of light that alarms them, for if the sky be uniformly overcast, they proceed on their excursions, and even the first drops of a soft shower do not make them return with any great precipitation.

Their taste is perhaps the most imperfect of their senses. They exert hardly any discrimination in the collection of honey from different flowers. They are not repelled by the scent or flavour of such as are extremely offensive to our organs, and scruple not to derive supplies from such as are highly poisonous. In some districts in America, it is well known that the honey acquired in this way very deleterious properties. The qualities of honey are, indeed, observed to vary much, according to the particular situation from which it is obtained. The most stagnant and putrid waters, as we have already noticed, are resorted to by bees with the same avidity as the purest. In their selection of flowers they are guided by the quantity of honey they expect to meet with, and in no respect by its quality. When the scythe has cut down all the flowers which before yielded them a plentiful supply, they discontinue their excursions, although the weather be in all respects propitious. Their smell must, therefore, be sufficiently acute to enable them to discover the presence of honey at great distances. Direct experiment has, indeed, proved this to be the case. Mr Huber found that they proceeded immediately towards boxes, which contained honey concealed from their view; and such, in fact, is the situation of the fluid of the nectaria in flowers. Some odours, especially the fumes of tobacco, and indeed all kinds of smoke, are highly obnoxious to them; this is the case, also, with the smell of oil of turpentine, alcohol, ammonia, the nitric and muriatic acids, and several other volatile chemical agents, upon receiving the impressions of which, they immediately set about ventilating themselves in the manner above described. But nothing excites their displeasure in a greater degree than the breath of the spectator; as soon as they feel which, they show signs of anger, and prepare to revenge it as an insult. The odour of the poison of their sting produces similar effects, exciting them to immediate rage and hostility.

Although it is sufficiently clear that many insects Smell possess the power of smell, yet the particular organ of this sense has never been accurately ascertained; and the opinions of naturalists have been much divided on this subject. These opinions have been supported more by arguments drawn from the analogy of what happens in other classes of animals, than by any direct experiments on insects themselves. We know that, in all animals respiring by means of lungs, the organs of smell are placed at the entrance of the passages of the air; and it has often been concluded, that, in like manner, the stigmata, or the orifices of the air tubes, were the seat of this sense in insects. By others, the antennae have been assigned as the organs, through which these impressions were conveyed to the sensorium. The experiments of Huber have proved that neither of these opinions is correct; and have satisfactorily shown, that in the bee this sense resides in the mouth itself, or in its immediate vicinity. Here, indeed, would be its proper station, if this faculty be intended, as we may reasonably suppose it to be, to apprize the individual of the qualities of the food, prior to its being eaten. When the mouth of the bee was plugged up with paste, which was allowed to dry before the insect was set at liberty, it remained quite insensible to the same odours, at which it had before manifested the strongest repugnance.

It is generally supposed that bees possess the sense Hearing of hearing. The common practice of making a loud noise by drums and kettles in order to attract a swarm is founded on this supposition. But the evidence is by no means conclusive; for we find that they are nowise disturbed by a loud clap of thunder, or by the report of a gun, or any other noises that may happen to arise around them. It is, however, certain, that they are capable of emitting a variety of sounds, which appear expressive of anger, fear, satisfaction, and other passions, and it would seem that they were even capable of communicating certain emotions to one another in this manner. Huber observed, that the queens, during their captivity, sent forth a peculiar sound, which he supposes to be a note of lamentation. A certain cry, or humming noise from the queen, will strike with sudden consternation all the bees in the hive; and they remain for a considerable time motionless and stupefied. Hunter has noticed a number of modulations of sound emitted by bees under different circumstances, and has instituted an inquiry concerning the means employed by them in producing these sounds, for an account of which we shall refer the reader to his paper in the Philosophical Transactions.

If the function of sensation in insects be involved in doubt and obscurity, the knowledge of those more interior faculties which are the springs of voluntary action is hid in still deeper mystery. Buffon refuses to allow bees any portion of intelligence, and contends that the actions we behold, however admirably they are directed to certain ends, are in fact merely the results of their peculiar mechanism. Other philosophers, such as Reaumur, have gone into the opposite extreme, and have considered them as endued with extraordinary wisdom and foresight,—as animated by a disinterested patriotism,—and as uniting a variety of moral and intellectual qualities of a higher order. The truth, no doubt, lies between these overstrained opinions; but it is extremely difficult to decide in what degree these respective principles operate in the production of the effects we witness. We have been too long in the habit of sheltering our ignorance of the causes of this class of phenomena, by referring them indiscriminately to what is called instinct, to submit to a cautious and patient investigation of the hidden springs of action. The term instinct should properly be regarded, not as denoting a particular and definite principle of action, whose operation we can anticipate in any new or untried combination of circumstances, but as expressive of our inability to refer the phenomena we contemplate to any previously known principle. Thus the actions which an animal performs in obedience to the calls of appetite, are not properly said to be instinctive; nor can the term be applied to actions, which are the consequence of acquired knowledge, and of which the object is with certainty foreseen by the agent. But when an animal acts apparently under a blind impulse, and produces effects useful to itself or to the species, which effects it could not have previously contemplated as resulting from those actions, it is then customary to say, that it is under the guidance of instinct, that is, of some unknown principle of action. It will be proper, therefore, to keep this distinction in view, in judging of the voluntary actions of the lower animals.

In no department of natural history is it more necessary to be aware of the proper import of the term instinct, than in studying the phenomena presented by the bee; for nowhere is it more difficult to discriminate between the regular operation of implanted motives, and the result of acquired knowledge and habits. The most striking feature of their history, and the one which apparently lays the foundation for those extraordinary qualities, which raise them above the level of other insects, is the disposition to social union. It may in general, indeed, be remarked, that animals which associate together so as to form large communities, display a higher degree of sagacity than those who lead a solitary life. This is especially observable among insects. The spider and Formicaleonis may exhibit particular talents, or practise particular stratagems in the pursuit and capture of their prey; but their history is limited to a single generation, and embraces none of those interesting relations, which obtain between individuals composing the gregarious tribes, such as the ant, the wasp, and the bee. Among these we trace a community of wants and desires, and a mutual intelligence and sympathy, which lead to the constant interchange of good offices, and which, by introducing a systematic division of labour, amidst a unity of design, leads to the execution of public works on a scale of astonishing magnitude. The attachment of bees to their hive, which they defend with a courage and self devotion truly admirable; their jealousy of intruders; their ready co-operation in all the labours required for the welfare of the community; their tender care of their young; the affection and homage which they bestow on their queen, and which they manifest on all occasions in the most unequivocal manner,—imply qualities such as we could hardly persuade ourselves could animate a mere insect, on which we are in the habit of proudly looking down as placed in one of the lowest orders of created beings.

We shall content ourselves, at present, with these general observations, as the instances which serve to illustrate their moral and intellectual character belong properly to the history of the different processes they follow in the construction of their combs, the hatching and rearing of their progeny, and the mode of conducting their migrations. To these subjects, therefore, we shall now proceed; and in order to present the most connected and complete account of their economy, we shall begin the history from the period when a new swarm has just occupied a hive, and when all the arrangements for their habitation, and the construction of the cells in which their eggs and provisions are to be deposited, are yet to be effected.

The first care of the labouring-bees, on their settlement in their new abode, is to clean it out thoroughly. While one set of bees is thus employed, another is distributed about the country, in order to procure the proper materials for blocking up the small holes and chinks of the hive, and for laying a firm foundation for the edifice, which is to be constructed within it. The substance which is principally employed in this preliminary stage is Propolis, a species of glutinous resin of an agreeable aromatic odour, and reddish brown colour, in process of time becoming darker, and acquiring a firmer consistence. According to the analysis of Vauquelin (Mém. Soc. Agricult. Departem. Seine), it is composed chiefly of resin, with a small proportion of wax, and of acid, and aromatic principles. It is soluble in alcohol, ether, and oils, both fixed and volatile; and tinges the solvent of a beautiful red colour. Cadet has since ascertained in it the presence of benzoic and gallic acids. Reaumur had not been able to dis- cover from what plants the bees collect this substance. Riem asserts, that it is chiefly from pines and other trees of the fir kind. The recent observations of Huber have assisted in the solution of this question. On placing branches of the wild popular tree before the hive, he found that the bees eagerly seized upon the varnish which exudes from the buds; and examining the chemical properties of this varnish, he identified it with the propolis, with which the inside of the hive is lined.

The propolis adheres so strongly to the legs and feet of the bee which has collected it, that it cannot be detached without the assistance of its fellow labourers. For this purpose the bee that is loaded presents its legs to the workers in the hive, which carry off with their jaws this adhesive substance, and immediately apply it, while yet ductile, all round the interior of the hive, and particularly over all the projecting parts; hence its name, of Greek derivation, signifying before the city. In like manner all the foreign bodies that are introduced into the common habitation, and are too heavy to be removed, are covered over with this resinous substance. If a snail, for instance, should happen to introduce itself into the hive, after dispatching it with their stings, they encrust it over with propolis. Mr Knight has observed that, besides propolis, bees will occasionally carry home, and employ as cement, other substances, having the same glutinous properties. He frequently covered the decorticated parts of trees, on which he was making experiments, with a cement composed of bees-wax and turpentine; and in the autumn, has observed a great number of bees occupied in carrying off this substance. They detached it from the tree with their forceps, and the little portion thus obtained was then transferred by the first to the second leg, by which it was deposited on the thigh of the third, precisely in the same manner as the pollen of flowers is collected and transferred. Whilst the bees were employed in the collection of this substance, Mr Knight had many opportunities of observing the peaceful and patient disposition of them as individuals, which Mr Hunter had also, in some measure, noticed. When one bee had collected its load, and was just prepared to take flight, another often came behind it, and despoiled it of all it had collected. A second, and even a third load was collected, and lost in the same manner; and still the patient insect pursued its labour, without betraying any symptoms of impatience or resentment. When, however, the hive is approached, the bee appears to be the most irritable of all animals, and is animated with the most vindictive spirit against a public enemy, without displaying any peculiar hostility in the revenge of a private injury.

The next object of their labours is to prepare the combs, which are to be the receptacles for the eggs, with which the queen is pregnant, and which are now about to be laid. The material employed for this purpose is not propolis, but wax; the production of which, by secretion from a particular set of bees, who feed largely upon honey, was formerly explained. The bees are, for this purpose, actively employed in collecting honey, and in imparting it to their companions in the hive, who, when they have filled their crops with it, hang together in a thick cluster from the top of the hive, and thus remain in a state of inactivity for a considerable period. During this time, the secretion of wax is proceeding, and may be seen collected in laminae under the abdominal scales, whence it is removed by the hind-legs of the bee, and transferred to the fore-legs, and from thence taken up by the jaws. In this operation, they are often assisted by their companions, who even directly seize upon the wax from under the abdomen of those who are before them. When a sufficient quantity of materials has thus been collected together, the process of building is commenced. But, in order to understand the subsequent operations, it is necessary to have a correct idea of the form of the cells which compose the combs. We shall, therefore, proceed to give some account of their structure when they have attained their perfect state.

The combs of a bee-hive are formed into parallel Form of the and vertical strata, each of which is about an inch Combs. in thickness, the distances between the surfaces of each being about half an inch, an interval which serves for the passage of the bees over both surfaces. They generally extend the whole breadth of the hive, and often descend the whole length, from the top to the bottom. They consist altogether of thin partitions, which inclose hexagonal cells about half an inch in depth, and a quarter of an inch in diameter, opening on both surfaces of the comb, and closed by a partition common to those on both sides, and which occupies the middle distance between the two surfaces. This partition is not, however, a plane, but is composed of a collection of rhombs. Three, and sometimes four of these rhombs, inclined to one another at a certain angle, form the bottoms of each cell, which thus has the shape of a flattened pyramid, of which the basis is towards the mouth of the cell. The geometric form of each individual cell is, therefore, a hexagonal prism, terminated by a trihedral pyramid; the three sides of which pyramid are rhombs, which meet at the apex by their obtuse angles, and, forming oblique angles with the sides of the prism, truncate a portion of these, and convert them from rectangles, which they would be in a regular prism, into trapeziums. Of the two angles of these trapeziums, adjoining to the base of the pyramid, one must be acute and the other obtuse; the acute angle of one trapezium being next to the acute angle of the adjoining trapezium, and the obtuse angle being in like manner next to another obtuse angle of the preceding trapezium; so that, in going round the base, we meet with pairs of acute and of obtuse angles alternately succeeding each other. The two adjoining acute angles of the trapezia are adjoining to two of the terminal rhombs, which here present their acute angles; so that at these points a solid angle of four planes is formed, all the angles being acute. Each pair of obtuse angles of the trapezia, on the other hand, are adjacent to the obtuse angle of one of the rhombs only; thus composing a solid angle of three planes, of which the angles are all obtuse, and these two kinds of solid angles succeed one another alternately all round the base of the pyramid; there being three of each kind, and six in all. The axis of each cell coincides, not with the axis of the cell on the opposite surface, but with one of its angles, so that each of the three obtuse angles, at the base of the terminal pyramid, corresponds to the central parts of three of the cells on the opposite side; and each of the sides of the pyramid, which closes a cell on one side, contributes, in part, to the closing of three of the cells on the opposite side. We may easily satisfy ourselves that this is the case, by piercing the centres of each of the three pâes which close the bottom of a cell, with a small pin, when, on turning the comb, the three pins will be found to have passed into three different cells on the opposite side.

A structure of this kind is obviously the one of all others calculated to afford the greatest space for each cell, with the same expense of materials. It is easy to perceive, in the first place, that, in a plane surface, when a number of small spaces are to be divided by partitions, the hexagonal form is the one which comprehends the largest space compatible with the extent of the lines which inclose them. For the equilateral triangle, the square, and the regular hexagon, are the only regular forms that admit of being joined together in the same plane without leaving interstices; and the proportion of the area to the periphery in every polygon, increases as the figure consists of a greater number of sides, and is therefore greater in the hexagon than in any of the other two. The truth of this proposition was perceived by Pappus, and even its application to the subject of the honeycomb was made by that ancient geometrician. But the determination of the form and inclination that should be given to the partitions which close the bottoms of the cells, and which may of course belong equally to those on both sides of the comb, is a problem much more complicated and difficult of solution. It has exercised the skill of several modern mathematicians of great eminence; and has generally been resolved by the assistance of the infinitesimal calculus, or the methods of maxima and minima. A mistake has sometimes been committed in supposing that the capacity of the cells would be affected by varying the inclination of the partitions, whereas, if abstraction be made of the thickness of these partitions all the space which is gained on the one side must be obtained at the expense of the space on the other, and the sum total will therefore remain the same. This error has been pointed out by Le Sage of Geneva, and also by others. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into that of the form producing the greatest saving of materials. König, the pupil of the celebrated Bernoulli, calculated that the angles of the rhombs, which should answer this condition, must be 109° 26', and 70° 34'. Cramer, professor of mathematics in the University of Geneva, has given a very elegant demonstration of this problem, from which it results that the obtuse angle of the rhomb must be such, that its half has for its tangent the square root of 2. This is the case with the angle 54° 44' 8"; the two angles of the rhomb are therefore 109° 28' 16", and 70° 31' 44". It follows, also, that the two diagonals of this rhomb are to one another in the same proportion as the side and diagonal of a square, that is, as 1 to 1.41421356237, &c. It is also another consequence from the same data, that the angles of the trapezia forming the sides of the hexagonal prism adjacent to the rhombs, are precisely equal to those of the rhombs themselves, and that the solid angle formed at the apex of the pyramid, and which is composed of those equal obtuse angles, is precisely equal to each of the three angles at the base, which are also formed of three obtuse angles. It is also true that these are the only angles which will give this perfect equality. Maraldi had already made the same remark; and assuming this principle of the equality of the angles as the basis of this reasoning, had calculated them on this hypothesis, making them 109° 28' and 70° 32', which is nearly accurate. To the same author we are indebted for the comparison of the results of theory with fact, by the admeasurement of the actual angles of the honeycomb; these he states to be about 110° and 70°, which is as near an agreement with theory as could well be expected.

Boscovich, who has also given a solution of the same problem, conceives that the equality of inclination of the planes gives greater facility to the construction of the comb, and might, therefore, be a motive of preference, independently of the greater economy of wax. MacLaurin has exercised his abilities in resolving this problem, and has demonstrated, by simple geometry, that the most advantageous form is that which results from the supposed equality of the three plane angles forming the solid angles at the base. He estimates the saving of wax by partitions so constructed, above what would be required for a flat partition, at one-fourth of the wax, which would be wanted to complete the truncated sides of the cells, so as to form them into rectangles. L'Huilier, in the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy, has given a demonstration which is remarkable for its simplicity, and for its involving none but elementary propositions; he values the economy of wax at \( \frac{1}{3} \) of the whole wax employed. Le Sage, as appears from the life of that philosopher by Professor Prevost, has shown that this celebrated problem reduces itself to the finding the angle at which two planes with a given inclination (such as 120°) can be cut by a third plane, so as to make all the angles resulting from the section equal to one another.

But a more essential advantage than even the economy of wax results from this structure, namely, that the whole fabric has much greater strength than if it were composed of planes at right angles to one another; and when we consider the weight they have to support when stored with honey, pollen, and the young brood, besides that of the bees themselves, it is evident that strength is a material requisite in the work.

It has often been a subject of wonder how such diminutive insects could have adopted and adhered to so regular a plan of architecture, and what principles can actuate so great a multitude to co-operate by the most effectual and systematic mode in its completion. Buffon has endeavoured to explain the hexagonal form by the uniform pressure of a great number of bees, all working at the same time, exerted equally in all directions in a limited space; and illustrates his theory by supposing a number of similar cylinders compressed together, and taking the form of hexagonal prisms by the uniform expansion of each. The analogy of the forms produced by the law of crystallization,—of the figures assumed by various parts in the animal and vegetable world, such as the skin of the bat, the inner coat of the second stomach of ruminant quadrupeds,—is also adduced by this captivating, but superficial writer, in support of his argument. However plausible this theory may at first sight appear, it will not stand the test of a more serious examination. The explanation he has attempted applies no farther than to the inclination of the sides of the cells; but he did not take into account, perhaps from not having studied the subject mathematically, the inclinations and forms of the planes which close each cell, and so curiously conspire on both sides to serve a similar office, while they at the same time accurately fulfil a refined geometrical condition. But it is sufficient confutation of the whole theory to show, that it is directly at variance with the actual process employed by the insects in the construction of their combs.

It might be supposed that bees had been provided by nature with instruments for building of a form somewhat analogous to the angles of the cells; but in no part, either of the teeth, antennae, or feet, can any such correspondence be traced. Their shape in no respect answers to that of the rhombs, which are constructed by their means, any more than the chisel of the sculptor resembles the statue which it has carved. The shape of the head is, indeed, triangular, but its three angles are acute, and different from that of the planes of the cells. The form of the plates of wax, as they are moulded in the pouches into which this substance is secreted, is an irregular pentagon, in no respect affording a model for any of the parts which compose the honeycomb. Hunter, observing that the thickness of the partition was nearly equal to that of the scales of wax, thought that the bees apply these scales immediately to the formation of the partition, by merely cementing them together. Reaumur, notwithstanding the use of glass hives, had not been able to discover the mystery of their process of architecture; but inferred, from what he saw, that the wax was rejected from the stomach in the form of a white frothy liquor. No naturalist, indeed, prior to Huber, had been able to follow these insects in their labours, on account of their crowding together in a thick mass while they are building; but the expedients resorted to by that ingenious philosopher have unfolded the whole process, which he has given with great detail in the second volume of his Observations sur les Abeilles. Huber witnessed the whole of their actions, and saw that each bee drew out, with its hind feet, one of the plates of wax from under the scales where it was lodged, and, carrying it to the mouth in a vertical position, turned it round, so that every part of its edge was made to pass in succession under the cutting edge of the jaws; it was thus soon divided into very small fragments, while at the same time a frothy liquor was poured upon it from the tongue, so as to form it into a perfectly plastic mass. This liquor gave the wax a whiteness and opacity which it did not possess originally, and rendered it at the same time tenacious and ductile. A quantity of wax thus prepared for use is accumulated, and applied to further the work in the manner we are presently to describe.

But, in considering the process by which the comb is formed, a circumstance should be pointed out, which seems not to have been particularly noticed by any author except Huber; and yet it is one of essential importance in studying their process of architecture,—it is, that the first row of cells, on either side, are of a form very different from that of the subsequent rows. As they take their origin from a plane surface, two of the sides necessary to complete the hexagon are cut off by this plane, so that the general form of the orifice is pentagonal; and the bottom of the cells on one side are composed of two equal rhombs only, and, on the other side, of two trapezoidal planes, with one rhomb. Such a modification of shape was necessary, in order to prepare the way for the regularly formed cells which were to follow.

The foundations of the combs are laid by the bees raising a solid block or plate of wax, of a semicircular form. In this they scoop out a small vertical channel, of the size of an ordinary cell. The sides of this channel are then strengthened by additions of wax. On the opposite side, two other channels are formed, one on each side of the plane opposite to the former channel. The extremities of these channels, which at first present a curved outline, are then fashioned into straight walls, forming an angle at each vertex. The bottom of each cell being thus sketched out, the design is completed by raising walls round the sides. Different bees generally work on the opposite sides at the same time, and appear to have some perception of the thickness of the partitions, and of the situation of the opposite walls, in which they are perhaps guided by slight prominences, occasioned by the depressions which correspond to them on the other side; and they scrape off the wax in those places where its thickness is greatest; that is, where the bees on the other side had accumulated materials. In this way, then, in constructing the successive rows, the axis of each cell will be found to occupy the most retiring parts of the partition, and will be opposite to the junction of three of the opposite cells.

Soon after the bees have completed the foundations, and constructed a few of the cells of the central comb, they begin two others, one on each side, at the proper distance, and in this manner continue to form others in succession, in proportion as the former are advanced. Their object, at first, seems to be, to extend the surface of the work, so as to admit of the greatest possible number of workers being employed at one and the same time. In this way, then, the work proceeds from all points at once, new cells being begun before the former are completed, so that the whole comb, while it is in progress of construction, has a semi-lenticular shape, broader at the top, and tapering below and towards the sides. It extends downwards, however, more rapidly than in any other direction, and its surfaces do not become parallel to each other, till the last stage of the building process. When this is completed, the whole is further strengthened by an additional coating of propolis, round the margin of all the cells; and the junctions of every plane, both of the sides and bottoms of the cells, are also soldered together by a lining of the same substance. The edges of the combs are also secured in their situations by being glued to the side of the hive, and supported by fresh abutments of propolis. Sometimes a mixture of wax and propolis, manufactured by the bees themselves, is employed as the cementing material. The first coating of this compound substance is denominated Commosis by Pliny, and described as having a bitter taste; the second, or the Pissoceros of the same author, is stated to be of a thinner consistence, and more adhesive than the former; while the third substance or propolis is completely solid.

The cells recently constructed are perfectly white, but in a short time they are found of a yellow tint, which becomes gradually deeper, and when very ancient gives them a dark brown cast. It is therefore easy to distinguish in a hive the successive periods of formation of different portions of the combs. From the researches of Huber, it appears, that these variations of colour are not owing to any changes in the wax itself, but to additional coatings of a peculiar varnish, consisting of propolis and a colouring matter. The latter differs materially from propolis, being wholly insoluble in alcohol. It loses its colour by the action of nitric acid, or the light of the sun. Its origin has not yet been discovered; nor has the mode in which it is applied been clearly made out; although Huber presumes, from his observations, that they spread it by means of their mandibles, which he has seen them rub against the sides of the cells, while they acquired a yellow colour from the operation.

Such is the general outline of the architectural labours of the bee. A number of modifications are however met with, adapting them to various purposes and to new circumstances. The cells are required to be of different sizes for the reception of different sorts of eggs and larvae. The smallest, which are also the most numerous, are appropriated to the eggs of the working-bees; a larger sort receive those of the males; and a small number of very large cells are destined for the education of the young queens, and are therefore called royal cells. The first set are generally 5 1/2 lines in depth, and 2 1/2 in diameter; the second are from 7 to 7 1/2 lines in depth, and 3 1/2ths in diameter; while the royal cells are above one inch deep, one-third of an inch wide, and their walls about one-eighth of an inch in thickness. Other cells, again, are set apart as magazines of honey, or of pollen; they are made twice as deep as the common cells, and their axes are inclined to the horizon, so that their mouths are in the highest part, and their liquid contents may be more easily retained. When these are filled, they are closed up by the bees with a wall of wax, and opened only when necessity requires.

The regularity of the cells is often disturbed in consequence of the admixture of rows of larger cells with those of smaller dimensions; but the pyramidal partitions are adapted by successive gradations to these changes; so that in many rows of what may be called cells of transition, the bottom presents four planes instead of three, two being trapeziums, and the other two irregular hexagons. These irregularities are met with chiefly in the combs most distant from the central one. When an abundant supply of honey induces them to lay up a large quantity in store, they build up for this purpose the walls of common cells so as to give them a greater depth. The royal cells are often raised from the ruins of a number of other cells, which are destroyed to make room for them; they are usually built on the edge of some of the shorter combs, and often in the very centre of the hive. Sometimes there are but three or four of them; at other times eleven, or even fourteen, have been counted in the same hive. They are formed of a mixture of propolis and wax; their form is oblong, resembling that of a pear; their position is always vertical, so that when they arise from amidst other cells, they are placed against the mouths of those cells, and project beyond the common surface of the comb. They are perfectly smooth on the inner surface; while their outer side is covered with a kind of hexagonal fretwork, as if they were intended for the foundation of regular cells.

As soon as a sufficient number of cells have been constructed, the queen begins to deposit her eggs, of the year that have been impregnated the preceding year, the oviducts begin to swell early in the spring, so that by the month of March they are ready to come forth. The queen-bee is, therefore, the earliest breeder of any insect we are acquainted with. But the young queens are capable of laying eggs thirty-six hours after impregnation. It appears to be now well ascertained by the experiments of Huber, that she is aware of the nature of the eggs she is laying, and deposits each in the kind of cell adapted to receive it. She may be seen examining attentively the capacity of the cell before laying her egg. She passes thus from one cell to another, allowing herself hardly any interval of repose. She commonly lays two hundred eggs in a day; but if the weather be warm, and vegetation luxuriant, she will lay a much greater number. The cold of autumn suspends this process. The eggs first produced are those of labourers, and their deposition continues for ten or twelve days, during which interval, the working-bees are busily employed in constructing the larger cells. The queen next acquires a considerable increase of size, so as to walk with difficulty. She then lays male eggs in the large cells, during a period of from sixteen to twenty-four days. They are less numerous than the former eggs, in the proportion of one to thirty.

These industrious insects now set about constructing royal cells; and the queen-bee, having finished her deposition of male eggs, begins again to lay those of the common bees; and finding royal cells open for their reception, deposits a single egg in each, but only at intervals of one or two days; the common cells receiving those laid in the meantime. When the hive is not sufficiently numerous, or the season has been unproductive, no royal cells are formed; and the education of a queen is not attempted.

As soon as the eggs are deposited, the bees eagerly seek for that species of nourishment on which the larvae. larva is to be fed. This consists of pollen, with a proportion of honey and of water, which is partly digested in the stomachs of the nursing bees, and which is made to vary in its qualities according to the age of the young. Pollen is afforded by flowers in the spring in such abundance that the bees of a single hive will often carry home above a pound of this substance in one day. The eggs of bees are of a lengthened oval shape, with a slight curvature, and of a bluish white colour. They are hatched without requiring any particular attention on the part of the bees, except that of keeping up a proper temperature; in which case, three days are sufficient for the exclusion of the larva. The larva has the appearance of a small white worm without feet, which remains generally coiled up at the bottom of the cell. The nursing bees feed it with great assiduity, with the kind of jelly above described, and in every respect exhibit the greatest attachment for them. Mr Hunter says that a young bee-maggot might easily be brought up by any person who would be attentive to feed it. It may be seen opening its two lateral pincers to receive the food, and then swallowing it. As it grows up, it casts its cuticle, like the larvae of other insects. In the course of five or six days, it has attained its full size, and nearly fills the cell in which it is lodged: it now ceases to eat, and the bees close up its cell with a covering of wax, or rather consisting of a mixture of wax and propolis, which they possess the art of amalgamating together. During the next thirty-six hours, the larva is engaged in spinning its cocoon; and in three days more, it is converted into the state of pupa or chrysalis. In this state it is perfectly white, and every part of the future bee may be distinguished through its transparent covering. In the course of a week, it tears asunder its investing membrane, makes its way through the outer wall of its prison, and emerges in its perfect form. Reckoning from the time that the egg is laid, it is only on the twentieth day of its existence that this 'last metamorphosis is completed. No sooner has it thus emancipated itself, than its guardians assemble round it, caress it with their tongues, and supply it plentifully with food. They clean out the cell which it had been occupying, leaving untouched, however, the greater part of the web, which thus serves to bind together still more firmly the sides of the comb. The colour of the bee, when it quits the cell, is a light grey: it requires two days before it can attain sufficient strength for flying. The metamorphoses of the male-bee follow the same progress, but require a few days longer for their completion, occupying about twenty-four days from the time of the egg being laid, to the attainment of the perfect state.

The eggs deposited in the royal cells are precisely similar to those of the working-bees, and might be substituted the one for the other. The larva arises from it precisely in the same manner, and does not differ from the larva of the workers. But the attention of the nursing bees is more incessantly bestowed on them; they are supplied with a peculiar kind of food, which appears to be more stimulating than that of ordinary bees. It has not the same mawkish taste, and is evidently acescent. It is furnished to the royal larva in greater quantities than it can consume, so that a portion always remains behind in the cell, after their transformation. The growth of the larva, and the development of all its organs, are very much accelerated by this treatment; so that in five days, it is prepared to spin its web; and the bees enclose it by building up a wall at the mouth of its cell. The web is completed in twenty-four hours; two days and a half are consumed in a state of inaction, and then the larva transforms itself into a pupa. It remains between four and five days in this state; and thus, on the sixteenth day after the egg has been laid, it has produced the perfect insect. When this change is about to take place, the bees gnaw away part of the wax covering of the cell, till at last it becomes pellucid from its extreme thinness. This must not only facilitate the exit of the fly, but may possibly be useful in permitting the evaporation of the superabundant fluids.

But the queen-bee, although perfectly formed, is not always at liberty to come out of her prison; for if the queen mother be still in the hive, waiting a favourable state of the weather to conduct another swarm, the bees do not suffer the young queens to stir out, they even strengthen the covering of the cell by an additional coating of wax, perforating it with a small hole, through which the prisoner can thrust out its trunk, in order to be fed by those who guard it. The royal prisoners continually utter a kind of plaintive song, the modulations of which are said to vary. One consequence of their detention is, that they are capable of flying as soon as they are set at liberty. But the motive of this proceeding, on the part of the bees who guard them, is to be found in the implacable hatred which the old queen bears against all those of her own sex, and which impels her to destroy without mercy all the young queens that come within her reach. The working bees are, on this account, very solicitous to prevent her even approaching the royal cells, while there is any prospect of a swarm being about-to take place. They establish themselves as a guard around these cells, and, forgetting their allegiance on this occasion, actually beat her off as often as she endeavours to come near them. If, on the other hand, the swarming season is over, or circumstances prevent any farther swarms from being sent off, the bees do not interpose any obstacle to the fury of the old queen, who immediately begins the work of destruction, transfixing with her sting, one after the other, the whole of the royal brood, while they are yet confined in their cells. It is observed by Huber, that the royal larvae construct only imperfect cocoons, open behind, and enveloping only the head, thorax, and first ring of the abdomen; and conceives that the intention of nature in this apparent imperfection, is that they may be exposed to the mortal sting of the queen, to whom they may be given up as a sacrifice.

When the old queen has taken her departure along with the first swarm, the young queens are liberated in succession, at intervals of a few days, in order to prevent their attacking and destroying one another, which would be the infallible consequence of their meeting. This exterminating warfare is prevented by the vigilance of the bees who guard them, so long as new swarms are expected to take place. When a young queen is liberated, she is, like others of her sex, anxious to get rid of her rivals, and even at that early age seeks to destroy her sisters, who are still confined in the other royal cells; but as often as she approaches them she is bit, pulled and chased without ceremony by the sentinels. But when the season is too far advanced for swarming, or when the hive is too much exhausted in its population by the swarms that have already been sent off, they no longer interfere in preserving peace, and the first that acquires her liberty proceeds to the massacre of all her rivals. If two or more queens should happen to issue out at the same moment, they mutually seek each other, and fight till one is killed; and the survivor is immediately received as the sovereign of the hive. The bees, far from seeking to prevent these battles, appear to excite the combatants against each other, surrounding and bringing them back to the charge when disposed to recede from each other; but when either of the queens shows a disposition to approach her antagonist, all the bees forming the clusters instantly give way to allow her full liberty for the attack. The first use which the conquering queen makes of her victory is to secure herself against fresh dangers by destroying all her future rivals in the royal cells; while the other bees, who are spectators of the carnage, share in the spoil, greedily devouring any food which may be found at the bottom of the cells, and even sucking the fluid from the abdomen of the pupae before they toss out the carcasses.

The impregnation of the queen-bee was formerly involved in the deepest obscurity, and has given rise to a multitude of very fanciful opinions. Some have denied that any intercourse with the male was necessary for the fecundation of the eggs. Swammerdam supposed that the mere effluvia proceeding from the males, where they were collected in clusters, was sufficiently active to produce this effect, by penetrating the body of the female. Huber proved, by a decisive experiment, that no such consequence resulted from these effluvia. Maraldi imagined that the eggs were fecundated by the drones, after being deposited in the cells, in the same way that the spawn of fishes is rendered prolific by the milters. Mr Debraw of Cambridge, in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions, of which an account is given under the article Bee, in the Encyclopaedia, fancied that he had seen the milt-like fluid in the cells. But this appearance has been shown by Huber to be a mere optical illusion, arising from the reflection of light at the bottom of the cell. When the males are excluded from the hive, the queen is as fertile, and the eggs as prolific, as when they are present. Hattorf supposed that the queen is capable of impregnating herself; an opinion which was supported by Sehiraeh and Wilhelmi, and was even favourably received by Bonnet, as it in some measure accorded with his discoveries respecting the Aphis, of which our readers will find an account in the article Aphis. (See Encyclopedia.) Linnaeus was of opinion that an actual union between the sexes took place, and Reaumur fancied that he had seen this happen within the hive. There is, however, great reason to think that he was mistaken. Huber has clearly proved that the queens are never impregnated as long as they remain in the interior of the hive; and, if confined within it, continue barren, though surrounded by males. It is only during her flight, at a considerable height in the air, that the male has complete access to her so as to effect the impregnation. In half an hour the queen-bee returns to the hive with unequivocal proofs of the intercourse that has taken place, for she has in fact robbed the drone of the organs concerned in this operation; and the drone, thus mutilated, is left to perish on the ground. From its being necessary that the queen should fly to a distance in order to be impregnated, Huber infers the necessity of a great number of drones being attached to the hive, that there may be a sufficient chance of her meeting one of them during her aerial excursion.

We are now to direct our attention to the migrations of bees, by which new colonies, similar to that for which had originally peopled the parent hive, are founded. The final causes of this phenomenon are sufficiently obvious; but it does not so clearly appear to what circumstances it is immediately owing. The increasing population of a hive probably occasions inconvenience from the want of room, the increase of heat, and the greater vitiation of the air; inconveniences which become still more serious as the summer advances. The spring is accordingly the commencement of the swarming season; no swarm, indeed, will ever take place while the weather is cold, nor until the hive is well-stocked with eggs of every kind. The queen-bee, in consequence of the great number of eggs she has been laying, is now reduced to a more slender shape, and is well fitted for flight. Her aversion for the royal brood, which she seems to foresee will in no long time become able to dispute the throne with her, and the vain attempts she makes to destroy them in the cradle, in which she is invariably repelled by the bees who guard them, produce in her a constant restlessness and agitation, which, as Huber represents it, rises to a degree of delirium. This frenzy, from whatever cause it may originate, is communicated to the workers; they may be seen hurrying to and fro in the combs, with evident marks of impatience; the heat of the hive is increased by their tumultuous movements; it sometimes rises suddenly, on these occasions, from 92° to above 104°. A general buzz is heard throughout the hive. This state recurs from time to time, for some days before the swarm is actually on the wing; and the interval is occupied in making preparations for the approaching expedition. Provisions are collected in greater quantity by the working-bees. Mr Hunter killed several of those that came away, and found their crops full, while those that remained in the hive had their crops not near so full. Scouts are sent out to look for a proper habitation. Mr Knight, in the Philosophical Transactions, gives us a curious account of his observations on their manoeuvres in this respect. In the cavity of a hollow tree, which, by the application of a board, had been fitted up for the reception of the swarms, he constantly ob- served "that, about fourteen days previous to their arrival, a small number of bees, varying from twenty to fifty, were every day employed in examining, and apparently in keeping possession of the cavity; for if molested, they showed evident signs of displeasure, though they never employed their stings in defending their proposed habitation. Their examination was not confined to the cavity, but extended to the external parts of the tree above; and every dead knot particularly arrested their attention, as if they had been apprehensive of being injured by moisture, which this might admit into the cavity below; and they apparently did not leave any part of the bark near the cavity unexamined. A part of the colony, which purposed to emigrate, appeared in this case to have been delegated to search for a proper habitation; and the individual who succeeded must have apparently had some means of conveying information of his success to others; for it cannot be supposed that fifty bees should each accidentally meet at, and fix upon the same cavity, at a mile distant from their hive, which Mr Knight has frequently observed them to do, in a wood where several trees were adapted for their reception; and, indeed, he observed, that they almost uniformly selected that cavity, which he himself thought was the best adapted to their use. It not unfrequently happened, that swarms of his own bees took possession of these cavities, and such swarms were in several instances followed from his garden to the trees; and they were observed to deviate very little from the direct line between the one point and the other, which seems to indicate that those bees, who had formerly acted as purveyors, now became guides."

On the day on which the swarm quits the hive, few of the workers roam to any distance, but several are seen performing circles in the air round the hive. The noise is on a sudden hushed; and all the bees enter the hive; this silence announces their immediate departure. A few workers appear at the door, turn towards the hive, and striking with their wings, give, as it were, the signal for flight. All those who are to accompany the expedition rush towards the door, and issue forth with wonderful rapidity, rising in the air and hovering for sometime, as if in order to wait for the assemblage of the whole troop. Then, following the motions of the queen, they settle wherever she alights, forming a dense cluster around her. Sometimes, from weakness, or other cause, she returns back to the hive, and is immediately attended thither by the rest. But if the weather be fine, the expedition is only deferred for one or two days, and again takes its departure. If their return be owing to the loss of their queen, they remain a fortnight or longer before the attempt to migrate is renewed, and then the swarm is much larger than before, which renders it probable that they have waited for the queen that was to go off with the next swarm. Sometimes when every thing indicates an approaching emigration, the passage of a cloud across the sun will suspend all their operations, and the previous bustle gives place to a state of perfect calm. But, if the day be not far advanced, the breaking out of sunshine will renew the commotion, and determine the moment of actual flight.

The swarm having rested for some time on the first landing-place, and collected the whole of its numbers, soars again in the air, keeping in a close phalanx, and directing its course with great velocity to the spot which their guides had selected; giving out, at the same time, a loud and acute toned hum by the action of their wings.

The parent hive, thus deserted by its queen and a large proportion of its inhabitants, is busily occupied in repairing its loss. The bees which remain quietly pursue their labours; the young brood, soon arriving at maturity, quickly fill up every deficiency; and young queens, being allowed their liberty, one after the other, conduct in their turns new swarms, in the same manner as the first. The second swarm is not sent off till after the space of from five to ten days after the first. The following swarms succeed quicker to each other, but consist of smaller numbers than the earlier ones. If it happen that two queens are found in a swarm, either the swarm divides itself into two, and have separate destinations, or a single combat between the queens decides on which of them the empire is to devolve. Sometimes, indeed, they appear not to perceive each other, and the parties belonging to each construct separate combs within the same hive; but no sooner do these combs come in contact, and thus give occasion to the queens meeting each other, than the contest begins, and it does not terminate but by the death of one of the rival queens. Successive swarms are sent off so long as the increase of population admits of it, and the numbers thus produced in a season depends on a variety of circumstances, such as the abundance of flowers, and the warmth of the climate, and the capacity of the hive. Bosc, while he was French consul in Carolina, found a hive in the woods which had been robbed of its wax and honey by the negroes; he contrived to convey the bees in his hat to a hive in his garden; he obtained from this hive eleven swarms before the end of autumn; and these again afforded him the same number of secondary swarms, so that, by the end of the year, he had twenty-two hives stocked from the one he had thus saved from destruction. In this country, a hive commonly sends off only two, and sometimes three swarms in the course of the summer.

Very few drones accompany the new colonies; so that almost all those produced in the spring remain in the hive. But when the queens are impregnated, and no new swarms are about to take place, the workers, who had till then suffered them to live unmolested in the hive, are on a sudden seized with a deadly fury towards them, and a scene of carnage ensues. This usually happens in July or August. They chase their unhappy victims in every quarter, till they seek a refuge at the bottom of the hive, where they collect in crowds, and are indiscriminately, and without a single exception, massacred by the working-bees, who, with implacable fury, transfuse them with their stings, and throw the dead bodies out of the hive. So great is their antipathy to all the race of drones, that they destroy, at the same time, the male eggs and larvae, and tear open the cocoons of their pupae, in order to devote them to one common destruction. This sacrifice of the males is not, however, the effect of a blind and indiscriminating instinct; for if a hive be deprived of its queen, the massacre does not take place, while the hottest persecution rages in all the surrounding hives. In this case the males are allowed to survive one winter.

Having thus got rid of the useless mouths, which consumed, without any advantage to the public, a large portion of their provisions, the bees spend the remainder of the summer in collecting stores of honey and of pollen for the ensuing winter. Their gleanings are now less abundant than in the spring, and require more labour in the search and collection. But at this season, the leaves of many kinds of trees, which are covered in the morning with a saccharine fluid that transudes through them, furnish them with a species of nourishment, which, though of very inferior quality to the fluid of the nectaria, still contributes to their support. Fruit is also attacked by bees, after the cuticular covering has been broke through by birds or snails. They also find nutriment in the Honey-dew, which is an excrementitious fluid from the Aphis. (See that article). Often, however, these resources fail, and the hive is threatened with famine. On these occasions, the distressed bees often betake themselves to plunder. Spies are sent out to examine the neighbouring hives; allured by the smell of honey, they examine the appearance and strength of its possessors; and, selecting the weakest hive as the object of attack, they begin a furious onset, which costs great numbers their lives. If the invaders should fail in their attempt to force the entrance, they retreat, and are not pursued by those whom they have assaulted; but if they succeed in making good the assault, the war continues to rage in the interior of the hive, till one party is utterly exterminated; reinforcements are sent for by the invading army, and the bees from the neighbouring hives often join the assailants and share in the plunder. In a short time the whole of the enemy's magazines are completely emptied. If on the other hand, the invaders should be defeated, the successful party is by no means safe from the attacks of the bees from other hives, if any of them should chance to have mingled in the fray, and especially if they have once penetrated as far as the magazines, for in that case they are sure to return, accompanied with a large reinforcement, and the unfortunate hive that has been once attacked, ultimately falls a sacrifice to these repeated invasions.

The close of autumn puts a period to their labours abroad. They then live on the provisions they have amassed, till the cold of winter reduces them to a torpid state; from which they awake on the return of vernal warmth, and renew the same circle of labours. Sometimes the strong light reflected from the snow during a clear sunshine, deceives them with the appearance of warmth, and some bees are tempted to issue forth in order to collect provisions. All who thus venture out perish by the cold in a few minutes.

Bees seldom die a natural death. They are at all times exposed to a variety of accidents, which thin their numbers; so that the average duration of their lives does not exceed one year. We may conclude that the whole generation is renewed in that space of time, from the results of experiments which have been tried of marking all the individuals of a hive in the spring, when it was found that none were in existence the next season. They are the natural prey of a number of quadrupeds, birds and insects; many are overtaken by stormy weather, or fly to too great a distance, and never find their way back again to the hive; others are benumbed by cold; and numbers perish in battle with others of their own species, or lose their lives by being unable to withdraw the stings which they have employed against their enemies. The fecundity of the queen-bee is, however, adequate not only to repair these losses, but to multiply the population in a very high progression. It is computed that in France a single queen will lay from 30 to 60,000 eggs; this however varies according to the climate; for in Carolina and the West Indies, they are known to produce at least three times this number. A single intercourse with the male is sufficient for the fertilization of all the eggs which the queen lays for at least two years, as has been proved by Huber; but its influence probably extends to all the eggs which the queen may lay during the rest of her life. The same queen has been observed to conduct swarms for two successive years; but the natural period of their lives is not known with any certainty. The ancients supposed it to be seven years, but Feburier suspects, that, like the males, they are destroyed by the labourers, when they have fulfilled their destination; for he was witness to an attack made by six labourers on a queen, whom he rescued with difficulty. Mr Hunter observes, that, judging from analogy, a bee's natural life is limited to a certain number of seasons; for he conceives that no individual insect of any species lives one month longer than the others of the same species. In the bee, one might suppose the period of life to be equal to the time that a hive can last; but this is not a necessary consequence, since they keep up a succession of generations. The comb of the hive may be said to be the furniture and storehouse of the bees, which by use must wear out; but, independently of this, it will, in time, become unfit for use, by the accumulation of cocoons, together with the excrements of the maggots, which are never removed. The former, indeed, lines the whole cell, top, sides and bottom; and may be distinguished from the cocoons of former maggots, that have been hatched in the same cell, by a portion of dried excrement, which is interposed between them, at the bottom of the cell. Mr Hunter has counted above twenty different linings in one cell, and found the cell about one quarter, or one-third filled up. A piece of comb so circumstanced, when boiled for the wax, will keep its form, and the small quantity of wax is squeezed out at different parts, as if squeezed out of a sponge, and runs together in the crevices; while a piece of comb that never has been bred in, even of the same hive, melts almost wholly down. Hence, the combs can only last a certain number of years. However, to make them last longer, the bees often add a little to the mouth of the cell, which is seldom done with wax alone, but with some sort of mixture; and they sometimes cover the silk lining of the last chrysalis; but all this, observes Mr Hunter, makes such cells clumsy, in comparison to the original ones.

We have thus given an account of the principal facts in the history of bees, as far as they relate to the usual or natural condition of these insects. We shall conclude with the relation of several curious phenomena, which they exhibit under particular and unusual circumstances, in which accident, or the designs of the experimenter, may have placed them.

The loss of the queen is an event which has the most marked influence on their conduct. Although the queen is constantly an object of attention and of strong affection to the whole community, they are not immediately sensible of her absence when she is removed from the hive. The ordinary labours are continued without interruption, and it is not till a whole hour has elapsed, that symptoms of uneasiness are manifested, and it is even then only partially displayed. The inquietude begins in one part of the hive, the workers become restless, abandon the young which they were feeding, run to and fro, and, by striking each other with their antennae, communicate the alarming intelligence very quickly to their companions. The ferment soon extends to the whole community; the bees rush precipitately out of the hive, and seek for their lost queen in every direction. This state of confusion continues for two or three, and sometimes for five hours, but never longer. Tranquillity is again re-established; they return to their labours; and selecting one of the larve that is not more than three days old, they break down two of the contiguous cells, sacrificing the larvae contained in them, and proceed to build up one royal cell from their ruins. They then supply the worm with the food necessary to promote its quick growth; and, leaving untouched the rhomboidal bottom, they raise around it a cylindrical enclosure. In three days, the larva has grown to such a size as to require an extension of its lodging, and must inhabit a cell nearly of a pyramidal figure, and hanging perpendicularly. A new pyramidal tube is therefore constructed with the wax of the surrounding cells, which is soldered at right angles to the first, and the bees, working downwards, gradually contract its diameter from the base, which is very wide, to the point. In proportion as the worm grows, the bees labour in extending the cell, and bring food, which they place before its mouth, and round its body, forming a kind of coiled zone around it. The worm, which can move only in a spiral direction, turns incessantly to take its food before its head; it insensibly descends, and at length arrives at the orifice of the cell. It then transforms itself into a pupa, is enclosed with a covering of wax, as before described, and, in the space of ten days, the original loss is thus repaired by the birth of a new queen. Schirach found, that if a number of bees be confined with even a single larva, which, in the natural course would have become a working bee, they immediately set about giving it the royal education above related, and thus raise it to the dignity of queen.

While the hive remains without a queen, swarming can never take place, however crowded the hive may be. The young queens are suffered to come out of their cells without impediment, and, after a number of deadly combats, the empire remains with the survivor. Huber has made the singular observation, that two queens, however inveterate may be their mutual hostility, never actually both destroy each other; and that when, in the course of their contest, they are placed in such a relative position as that each has it in her power to strike a mortal blow on the other with its sting, they suddenly separate, and fly from each other with every appearance of being panic-struck. The final cause of the instinct that prompts this conduct is sufficiently obvious, as, without it, the hive would be altogether deprived of a queen.

The bees recognise the individual person of their own queen. If another be palmed upon them, they seize and surround her, so that she is either suffocated, or perishes with hunger; for it is very remarkable that the workers are never seen to attack a queen-bee with their stings. If, however, more than eighteen hours have elapsed before the stranger queen be introduced, she has some chance of escape. The bees do; indeed, at first seize and confine her, but less rigidly; and they soon begin to disperse, and at length leave her to reign over a hive, in which she was at first treated as a prisoner. If twenty-four hours have elapsed, the stranger will be well received from the first, and at once admitted to the sovereignty of the hive. If a supernumerary queen be introduced into the hive, she is laid hold of by the bees, and presented to the reigning queen, while a ring is formed by the bees, who continue to be spectators, and even promoters of the combat, in which one or other of the queens is destined to perish. Schirach and Reims had imagined that, in these circumstances, the stranger met her death from the hands of the working bees, but this mistake has been rectified by Huber, who gives the account above stated.

If the impregnation of the queen be delayed beyond the twenty-first day of her life, she begins soon after to lay the eggs of drones, and produces no other kind of eggs during the remainder of her life. This very curious and unexpected fact was discovered by Huber, and has been satisfactorily established by his very numerous and varied experiments, although its explanation is perhaps attended with insuperable difficulties. The body of a queen, whose impregnation has thus been retarded, is shorter than common, the extremities remain slender, while the two first rings of the abdomen, or those next the thorax, are uncommonly swollen. On dissecting the double ovary, both branches were found to be equally expanded and equally sound; but the eggs were apparently not placed so closely together as in common queens. It was not correctly ascertained, whether the queens, whose impregnation was retarded, laid a number of drone eggs corresponding to the whole number of eggs, both of workers and drones, which they ought to have deposited; but it is certain that they laid a greater number of drone eggs than they ought naturally to have done. On these occasions, the instinct of the queen-bee appears to suffer, for she then lays her eggs indiscriminately in large and in small cells; those laid in large cells producing large drones; those in small cells small drones; and she has been known to lay the eggs of drones even in royal cells, some of which are always constructed when the queen begins to lay male eggs. It is curious that the workers were, on these last occasions, deceived, and treated the embryo drones as if they had been truly of the royal brood.

One of the most remarkable facts concerning the generation of bees, is the existence occasionally of prolific workers, the discovery of which we owe to Reim. Although it was doubted by Bonnet, its reality has been fully confirmed by the researches of Huber; and it explains what was before unaccountable, the production of eggs in hives absolutely destitute of a queen. It is also remarkable, that the eggs thus produced are always those of drones. The origin of these supplementary queens is accounted for, from their having passed the vermicular state in cells contiguous to the royal ones, and from their having, at an early period, devoured some portion of the stimulating jelly, which was destined for the nourishment of the royal brood; and from their ovaria thus receiving a partial development, which renders them susceptible of being impregnated. It is curious that these imperfect queens are still objects of jealousy and animosity to the queen-bee. How they become impregnated has not been ascertained; but the fact of their being productive was a strong confirmation of the truth of Schirach's theory concerning the sexes of bees. Needham, to whom the fact was known, had cluded the force of the argument, by pretending that these bees did not belong to the working class, but were real queens of an unusually small size. The supposed absence of ovaria in the working-bee was still, indeed, a difficulty which tended to throw some degree of doubt on the correctness of Schirach's doctrine. No person, as Bonnet repeatedly alleges, could suppose that these organs, however minute they might be, had escaped the penetration of Swammerdam, who was unrivalled in his anatomical skill in all that related to insects, and who had bestowed great labour in the examination of the structure of the bee. What had cluded his scalpel and microscope, was reserved for the still finer hand, and more dexterous dissection of a lady. Miss Jurine, the daughter of the celebrated naturalist of Geneva, has discovered, by adopting a particular method of preparing the object to be viewed, the rudiments of ovaria in the common working-bee; she examined a great number, and never failed to find them. Cuvier, in his Leçons d'Anatomie Comparée, mentions a suspicion that he had seen some very small oviducts in the working-bees, a suspicion which we now find to be completely verified.

We have next to relate the event of experiments of a more cruel kind, but which illustrate several points in the physiology of these insects. The amputation of the four wings of the queen did not interfere with her laying of the eggs, and the workers did not show her the less attention on account of her being thus mutilated. Of course, if the operation be performed before she is impregnated, she remains barren, since it is necessary for the sexual congress that she should fly out of the hive. The amputation of a single antenna appeared to be productive of no bad consequence of any kind; but the removal of both the antennae was followed with singular effects. The queen who had suffered this operation ran about in apparent disorder, dropping her eggs at random, and was incapable of directing her trunk with precision to the food that was offered her. At times she appeared desirous of escaping from the hive, and when this was prevented, she returned in a state of delirium, was indifferent to the caresses of the workers, and received another similarly mutilated queen, that was presented to her, without the least symptom of dislike. The workers, on the other hand, received the stranger queen with great respect, although the first still remained in the hive. A third queen, not mutilated, was next introduced; she was very ill received, and immediately detained and kept close prisoner. When the queen deprived of her antennae was allowed to quit the hive, she was followed by none of the workers, and was abandoned to her fate.

Bees naturally build from above downwards, but may, by a particular artifice, devised by Huber, be induced to reverse this process. For this purpose, a glass hive, with slender laths fixed at the bottom of it, must be provided, and the bees confined in it. They are unable to fasten themselves to the smooth surfaces, and, therefore, establish the foundations of the combs on the wood, and are forced to proceed in a direction opposite to the usual one; in this way Huber was enabled to observe their proceedings. But the readiest mode of inducing them to build in any particular direction, is to supply them with portions of ready-made combs, which should be fixed with wires in the proper position; and they will always continue to complete them upon the model presented to them. The hive which Huber recommends is constructed on this principle, consisting of upright frames of a square form, fitted to each other, and of such a size as just to contain each of them a single comb; by separating these, every part of the hive can be laid open and examined with the utmost ease. Fébrur has improved upon this construction by changing the shape of the frames from a square to a trapezium, having an acute angle at the summit, a form which allows the moisture that collects at the top to run down the sides more easily than it would do from a flat roof. In this way, any portion of the honey or wax may be removed at pleasure, without hurting or incommoding any one of the bees; and artificial swarms may, at the proper season, be readily procured, by dividing the hive into two portions, and adapting empty frames to each portion.

The wasp and the hornet have long been known as the determined enemies of the bee, committing great ravages among these weaker insects; they attack them individually, but oftener commit their aggressions in large armies, on which occasions numbers perish on both sides. In some parts of America, wasps have multiplied to so great a degree, as to render it impossible to rear bees. Among quadrupeds, the ant-eater occasionally devours them. The bear and the badger overturn the hives, and plunder their contents. Rats and mice are very formidable enemies, as they invade them at all seasons, and especially during their torpid state, when they are incapable of revenging the aggression. The woodpecker may succeed in breaking through the hive, and then speedily destroys all its inhabitants; the swallow, the sparrow, the titmouse, the eucokoo, and the Merops apiaster, or bee-eater, and poultry of every kind, prey upon them separately. According to Bosc, they are also food for the shrikes, and for the Falco apivorus. Lizards watch for them, and seize them as they alight near the hive. Toads occasionally devour them. They are in some danger from the larger kinds of spiders, and of Libellula, as also from the Philanthus apivorus of Fabricius. But the most insidious and destructive enemy of these insects is the moth; various species of which, particularly the Phalena mellollena, insinuate themselves into the hive, and deposit their eggs unperceived between the cells, in such numbers, that the hive is soon overrun with the larve, where they are hatched, and the bees are forced to abandon the hive. A new enemy of the same tribe has been lately discovered by Huber, in the Sphinx atropos, well known by the name of death's head. Towards the end of autumn, when the bees have filled their magazines, a loud hum is sometimes heard near their habitation, and a multitude of bees come out during the night, and fly about in the utmost confusion. The tumult continues for several hours, and the next morning a number of dead bees are strewed before the hive. On examining the hive, it is found to have been robbed of all its honey, and the bees do not return to it. These effects result from the incursions of the sphinx, which watches its opportunity to introduce itself into the hive during the night, when the bees are deprived of the advantages of vision, which the sphinx enjoys in greater perfection at this period. By rendering the door-way extremely narrow, so as only to admit a single bee at a time, this accident may be prevented; and it is curious that the bees themselves frequently anticipate this danger, and provide against it by employing, of their own accord, the very same mode of defence. They construct a thick wall which barricades the entrance, and resembles a regular fortification, with bastions, casemates, and massive gateways. They often, indeed, have recourse to a similar contrivance for protection against the pillaging-bees, enabling them to repel the assault with greater effect. At other times when the danger is less pressing, the inconveniences of so narrow a gateway being strongly felt, they enlarge it by removing the fortification they had built, and do not again construct it unless the appearance of the enemy in the ensuing season should inspire them with fresh alarms. If, on the other hand, the precaution of narrowing the gateway should already have been taken by the cultivator, the bees, feeling themselves secure, spare themselves the unnecessary labour of erecting these walls. This single trait in their history is a sufficient refutation of those theories which ascribe all their actions to the operation of a blind indiscriminating instinct, and would exclude every species of foresight and reflection.

(w.)

B E G G A R.

The word literally means, one who begs. In a more restricted sense, it means one who begs the means of subsistence. Even this definition, however, is too extensive for the idea to which, in this article, we mean to confine it. The class, in fact, of the persons to whom the term beggar, in the most restricted sense, applies, cannot easily be separated by an exact line of distinction from the kindred tribes. You cannot define the beggar as one who asks the means of subsistence, or money to purchase it, from passengers in the streets and highways; because there are people who beg from house to house. If you include those who beg from house to house, even that will not suffice, because there are persons who beg by letter, and have various means, beside language, of bringing to the knowledge of others the tokens of real or fictitious distress. And, if you make a definition extensive enough to embrace all these classes, you will make it include persons whom no one regards as standing in the rank of beggars; every person, almost, who, from any cause, is brought to require the assistance of others. It is not useless to contemplate how these classes run into one another; because it teaches the necessity of delicate and cautious proceedings, when we take measures of cure; especially if force enters at all into their composition.

1. Of the class of persons to whom, in the common use of language, the term Beggar is with propriety assigned, there is one distinction which is obviously and commonly made; that is, into those who beg from necessity, and those who beg from choice. In each of these divisions, there is great variety. For a description of the field of mendicity we derive helps from the Report of a Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in the year 1815, to inquire into the state of mendicity in the metropolis. The inquiry is very imperfect; the interrogation of the witnesses superficial and unskilful; the information which they give not followed up, by exploring other and better sources, which they indicate; but, as people had been left to casual observation, to fancy, and conjecture before, the facts and conjectures which that Report lays before us are still the best information we possess.

Nothing more strongly indicates the deficiency of our knowledge upon this subject, than the different opinions which the Committee received on the proportion between those who beg from necessity, and those who beg from choice. The persons examined were those of whom the Committee made choice, as having possessed peculiar opportunities of knowledge; and this was a point to which their inquiries were peculiarly directed. Yet one part of the witnesses strongly asserted, that a proportion as large as one half were beggars from necessity; another part of them asserted that all beggars, with hardly any exception, prosecuted the occupation from choice. Mr Martin, the conductor of an inquiry into the state of mendicity in the metropolis, under instructions from his Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, which inquiry extended to about 4500 cases, stated, as "the general result of his information, that beggary is, in very many cases, perhaps in about half the cases of those who beg, the effect rather of real distress, than of any voluntary desire to impose. So far from having found, amongst those who have attended at the office, any reason to think that the whole was a matter of imposition, I have (says he) found cases of the most acute suffering, which have long been concealed, of some of the beggars, who belonged to parishes in the metropolis, who have not made their cases properly known to the parish-officers, and who have ventured to slip out of their parishes, not so much because they wished to impose, as because they were driven by distress to beg." Mr Martin grounded this conclusion also upon the general fact, that the number of women was much greater than that of men, and that of married women greater than that of single. "Men," he remarks, "are stronger than women, have more resources, and are better able to provide for themselves; and single women are more eligible for service than married, and usually have only themselves to maintain."

The Rev. Henry Budd, who had been fourteen years Chaplain to Bridewell Hospital, to which the greater number of the persons taken up for begging in the streets of London are committed, was asked, "Have you ever known a worthy person begging in the streets?"—"Yes; I have known many that I should call worthy; and, I think I could mention some who have come up from the country distressed for want of work. They think London is paved with gold, or presents opportunities the country does not; and they find themselves here without friends. I have met with many whom I considered very worthy."

Of these two witnesses, the personal experience in the case was equal, or probably superior to that of all the rest taken together.

From other witnesses, however, of whom the experience was also great, the committee received affirmations of an opposite import. Mr John Cooper, a visitor of the Spitalfields Benevolent Society, was asked, "From the observations you have made upon the state of poor families, do you think any worthy families have recourse to begging in the streets?"—Ans. "I have no idea at all, from what has come under my own observations, that, in any individual case, persons, that were worthy objects, however distressed they were, have had recourse to street-begging."

Mr John Doughtry, a gentleman much in the habit of visiting the habitations of the needy, was asked, "In your opinion, do many worthy, honest, industrious persons have recourse to begging, or does this class of society consist chiefly of the idle and profligate?"—Ans. "The instances in which worthy, honest, industrious persons have recourse to begging are extremely rare. They will, in general, rather starve than beg. A person of veracity, who sometime ago visited 1500 poor families in the neighbourhood of Spitalfields, affirms, that, out of full 300 cases of abject poverty and destitution, and at least 100 of literal want and starvation, not a dozen had been found to have recourse to begging. Many of the most wretched of the above cases had been, not long before, able to support themselves in some comfort, but want of employ had completely ruined them. They were, at that moment, pressed by landlord, baker, and tax-gatherer; had pawned and sold every thing that could be turned into money; were absolutely without a morsel of food for themselves or family; but still had not recourse to begging. As a general fact, the decent poor will struggle to the uttermost, and even perish, rather than turn beggars."

This is heroism, in comparison with which, that of the Herculeses and the Hectors, ancient and modern, sinks into nothing! What an admirable foundation of virtue must be laid, in these minds, which even thus endure the horrors of death, approaching with all the torments of hunger and cold, rather than seek to relieve themselves by courses reputed disgraceful! And how unworthily is this class of persons traduced, by those who represent them as capable of being restrained by nothing but a dungeon or a bayonet; and who, by their ignorance of human nature, so cruelly prolong the needless miseries under which it labours!

According to the experiment mentioned by Mr Doughtry, and it is upon a large scale, and a part of the population (the circumstances of the people in Spitalfields are not favourable to virtue) which may be reckoned below rather than above the common standard, out of 400 individuals, of the lowest order, 388 will consent to perish by hunger, rather than beg. In confirmation of this testimony, an extraordinary fact has come to our knowledge. We have been informed by a gentleman, whose knowledge of the circumstances and behaviour of the journeymen in the metropolis may be regarded as in a very unusual, or rather an unexampled degree, minute and correct, that, of this important portion of the labouring population, no one ever begs; that such a thing as a journeyman tradesman, or any of his family, begging, is almost unknown; and may, with certainty, be pronounced as one of the rarest of contingent events. When it is considered to what an extraordinary degree most of the employments by which these men earn the means of subsistence are liable to fluctuation; that thousands of them are for months together deprived of work, as was the case with thousands, for example, of the carpenters and bricklayers during the severe winter of 1815; that of those the whole must be reduced to the most cruel privations, and a great proportion actually starve unpitied, unheard of, and unknown; the resolution by which they abstain from begging, should be regarded as one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the human mind.

It may still be possible to reconcile these undoubted facts with the testimonies of Mr Martin and Mr Budd. It appears that a great proportion of the beggars to whom they allude are women, and women with families; whose spirits, where they are left to themselves, are less able to support them, and to make the dread of disgrace an overmatch for the pains of hunger and the terrors of death. It appears, also, that a large proportion of them are the wives of soldiers, in the company of whom the sense of disgrace is apt to lose its pungency. People from the country, simple, and without resources, add a portion to the number of those whose mendicity cannot be regarded as the effect of vice. And it cannot, surely, be a source of wonder, that, out of so large a population, so great a portion of whom are liable to the extremity of want, there should be a few with whom the dread of disgrace should not be so powerful a motive as the love of food, and of life.

2. Of the number of beggars in the metropolis (and no attempt has been made to discover it in the rest of the country), the labours of the Committee have ascertained hardly any thing. At the time of the first inquiry, which was made by Mr Martin, 2000 cases presented themselves. This, by a vague estimate, he supposed might be about one-third of the whole; and allowing at the rate of a child and a half to each principal, he conjectured that the whole number might be about 15,000. If this be supposed a tolerable approximation, with regard to the metropolis, a comparison of the population of the metropolis with that of the whole country, will give an approximation to the number of beggars in the kingdom.

3. With regard to the number of beggars, an important fact appears to be ascertained; that it is gradually diminishing. Mr Martin said, "I do think that the number of beggars has something decreased since the first inquiry, nine years ago; and I am very much confirmed in that opinion, by what persons have told me, that they have not seen so many as they did. I really think there are not so many by one-fourth." Sir N. Conant, of the Police-office in Bow-street, said, "I think the number of beggars was greater thirty years ago than now. I have acted as a magistrate for more than thirty years.—Do you mean greater in proportion to the population?—Greater in fact. I am sure, on my own recollection and observation, that mendicity is a less nuisance now than it was thirty years ago."

Sir Daniel Williams, a magistrate attending the Police-office in Whitechapel, was asked, respecting the beggars in that district, "Do you think the number has increased within any given period?"—Ans. "I think, within the last two years, they have rather diminished." Mr John Stafford, chief clerk of the office in Bow-street, said, "It strikes me, from the knowledge I have had, having been chief clerk of the Police-office in Bow-street ever since the year 1803, that there are not the same number of beggars about the streets that there used to be; I think the number is considerably decreased." This corresponds so fully with what strongly meets the observation of every attentive man, and has been amply given in evidence before the Committees of the House of Commons, on the state of education, and the police of the metropolis, during the last session of Parliament, respecting the great improvement in the morals and in the manners of the lower orders, that it may be regarded as a fact of which no reasonable doubt can be entertained.

4. This is the little which appears to be known with regard to the proportion between the beggars practised by choice, and the beggars from necessity, and with regard to the number of the whole. We shall next speak of the arts by which it is understood that the trade of beggars is carried on. This appears to be the grand subject of curiosity. There is a mystery about this, and a fancied ingenuity, which those who wish for the marvellous are very much stimulated to explore and to magnify. The fact, however, is, that the contrivances, upon the whole, are few, and almost all of them obvious, and coarse. They are expedients for exhibiting as much as possible of the appearances of distress. Of these, rags and nastiness are one portion, which it surely requires but little ingenuity to display. The different kinds of bodily infirmity, chiefly those which incapacitate for labour, are the remaining portion. On this subject the most authentic details which have been collected, are those contained in the Report of the Committee on Mendicity. We shall select from the evidence, as far as it goes, the description of the principal arts; and the intelligent reader will perceive, that, with regard to invention, they are near the bottom of the scale.

The Reverend William Gurney said, "I am rector of St Clement Danes, and minister of the Free Chapel in West Street, St Giles's. In the course of my ministry there, I have had a great deal of occasion to visit persons in very great distress. I have ascertained, that there are four different ways of begging. Some are by letters, which are sent by post; and some are what we call knocker beggars, who go from house to house, knocking at every door. If they get a knowledge of any respectable person in the street, they pretend they have received money at his house, to make a sum to pay rent, or the postage of a letter from a son who has been six or seven years at sea, and from whom they expect a remittance; or for other purposes. On these occasions they have generally some written statement in their hands. Some beggars are stationary. They come to their stand at a certain hour, where they remain all day, or after so many hours repair to another. Of these beggars, those who are blind, or maimed, or have children, succeed the best. There are others, women and children, who are moveable beggars, following not the street but the people. For instance, at the time of the play, they are always very near the theatres; and if they see a young gentleman and a young lady walking together in deep conversation, they will pester them, and run before them till they give them something to get rid of them. Those people, at other times of the day, if it is a Sunday, for instance, will be found near chapels where there are large congregations; they know as well where the large congregations are as possible. There are others who are continually begging from house to house; they go through a great number of streets in the day, occasionally taking a ballad, or a bunch of matches, and pretend to be picking up bones in the street, and early in the morning kneeling down to areas, tormenting the cook when she is busy in the kitchen, until they get some broken victuals, as they call it, but they actually sell this victuals; that I have found out." In St Giles's there are some eating houses for the very poorest mendicants, where they go and sell this victuals they get from different houses."

This is a correct description of the most common cases of begging. There is one case, by no means uncommon, which we do not perceive described by any of the witnesses; that, when three or four men, being or appearing to be lame or maimed, and most commonly in the guise of sailors, go out in a body, singing with great loudness, and almost barricading with their bodies the streets through which they move, in such a manner, that nobody can pass without a vehement onset, while the timid or sensitive hardly dare to resist. Of course, this takes place only in these streets in which there is least danger of their being taken up.

The following is a description given by the Reverend W. Gurney, of some other classes of beggars. He had mentioned a set of applications frequently made to him, by persons who pretended that prize-money, or benefits of some other sort were due to them, of which, however, being deprived by want of knowing the steps to be taken, they entreated a letter to somebody who would instruct them; "but their object was to get a letter with my name to it, with which probably in a short time they could get L.20. If I have written to any body in the office of the Treasurer of the Navy, whom I knew, for instruction or counsel how they ought to act, recommending the bearer to this person for any information he could give upon such points; if I only said, I beg leave to recommend the bearer to your notice, they would paste this upon another sheet of paper, cutting off the bottom part (and one person was detected in doing this), and then they would take the name at the bottom, and so paste it together, making a kind of a recommendation of this person: knowing who I was acquainted with, some other clergyman, perhaps setting me down as giving them 10s.; that clergyman is induced to give them 10s. also, and to send them to some benevolent person in his congregation: and so they go on till they have got L.20: and that has frequently been done, I do not mean always by imposition. But, in many cases, where persons have been in distress, through providential circumstances, I have written to another clergyman, saying, such a woman was distressed, and had so many children, and that her husband was out of work, and that this I knew to be the fact, for I had inquired. I have given half a guinea, and have given the names of others; and by this means sufficient relief has been procured without coming to the parish at all. But the impositions on the subject of recommendations are very great; I have had letters from all parts of the country, inquiring whether I gave a general recommendation to such a person; and they have said, we saw a letter purporting to be in your handwriting; we were pretty confident it was not written by you, but it was a very good imitation. One man in Staffordshire, where I had lately been, got a great deal of money upon such a letter. I conceive the beggars in the streets are more numerous at one time of the year than another; and it would be supposed the time of the year when they were most numerous, would be in the early part of the winter; but that is not the case, for now they are as thick as at any time of the year. I have been endeavouring for a long time to ascertain the reason of this; and the first obvious reason for the influx of beggars into the metropolis, at this season of the year, is, with respect to one class of beggars, those who do it by letters or recommendations; and not going from house to house, that they take advantage while Parliament is still sitting, or particular persons being in town; they perhaps are pretty stationary in London all the year; but they are more anxious at this time, and therefore more heard of, because people are going out of town, and therefore they are taking time by the forelock, and work double tides; that is the reason I very frequently have letters sent by friends of mine in affluence, Mr Wilberforce and others, requesting me to inquire into particular cases, and if I found them to be as represented, to give them so and so. I have generally been troubled more at this season of the year than at any other. As to those who knock at the door to beg, the reason of their being so numerous at this time of the year, I apprehend, is, that many come out of the country with a view to take the early hay-time about the metropolis, but they bring always a large suit with them. If a man comes to mow in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, they mow their way back again, the harvest beginning sooner near the metropolis; they bring with them a wife and six or seven children. I have seen hundreds coming up through Stanmore, when I resided there. They generally come too soon, and the streets are filled with these poor people: One says, if I could but get money to buy a fork I could get work; and another, if I could get money to buy a rake, I could get employment. I have had half a dozen with me since Saturday, stating that they came up to get a job of work, but the market is overstocked: there are so many Irish here. The consequence of these people coming is, their children are immediately set to begging in the streets, and with the dust upon them, having travelled a great way, and frequently in real want, they move the compassion of people very much; they are frequently sitting with papers stuck in their hats. In the course of six or eight weeks great numbers of those will disappear; the husbands will get to mowing, their wives will get a hay-fork, and the children will get to weeding in the gardens: Then they get a dreadful habit, by coming to the metropolis, a habit of idleness and drinking; and those children are annually instructed in idleness and drinking, and of course lying; idleness is sure to bring on lying and theft. I dare say there are very few of these mendicant children who are not trained up to pilfer as well as to beg; they come principally, I believe, from the manufacturing counties. On a journey from Birmingham to London, two years ago, I passed not less than two hundred with their wives and children, who were begging as I passed."

The following statement is inserted in the Re- port of the Committee, under the title of "Information communicated by three members of a Society instituted for Benevolent Purposes."

"In Nicholas-court, Rosemary-lane, there are about twenty beggars, male and female, of the very worst description, great impostors, drunkards, blasphemers, &c.: their rendezvous the City of Carlisle, Rosemary-lane.

"In Mill-yard, Church-lane, about ten female beggars.

"In White Horse-court and Blue Anchor-yard, about fourteen beggars.

"In Detridge-street, New-street, and St Catherine's-lane, about thirty female beggars.

"In Angel-Gardens and Blue Gate Fields, about twelve beggars, four of them blacks.

"In Chapel-street, Commercial-road, six beggars.

"In Goodman's-yard, Minories, six beggars affecting blindness.

"In the neighbourhood of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green, about thirty-five families may be computed at one hundred and fifty members, who subsist by begging and plunder. There are about thirty Greenwich Pensioners, who hire instruments of music and go out in parties.

"If each beggar does not procure at least 6s. per day, they are considered very bad at their business.

"In visiting George-yard, leading from Highstreet, Whitechapel, into Wentworth-street, we found there were from thirty to forty houses apparently full of people; and being desirous of knowing the situation they were in, we gained access to several of them where we had formerly visited distressing cases; and from the information we collected, we conceive that in these houses there are no less than two thousand people; the whole place, indeed, presents such a scene of human-misery and dissipation as can hardly be conceived. We learned from those we had access to, that one half of these inhabitants subsist almost entirely by prostitution and beggary; the other half are chiefly Irish labouring people.

"In Wentworth-street (adjoining the above yard) there are a great many houses occupied by inhabitants similar to those in George-yard. One of these (a private house, No. 53) we visited, and were not a little surprised to find that it contained one hundred beds, which are let by the night or otherwise, to beggars, and loose characters of all descriptions. In some of the lanes leading from this street, there are other houses of the same kind."

Mr Sampson Stevenson, who had been Overseer of the parish of St Giles's the preceding year, and by that circumstance forced into an acquaintance with the practices of its begging inhabitants, said,—"There is a man whose real name I do not know, but he goes by the name of Granne Manoo. He is a man who, I believe, is scarcely out of jail three months in the year; for he is so abusive and vile a character, he is very frequently in jail for his abuse and mendicity. He is young enough to have gone to sea, but I believe he has been ruptured, consequently they will not take him. I have seen him scratch his legs about the ankles, to make them bleed; and he never goes out with shoes. That is the man that collects the greatest quantity of shoes and other habiliments; for he goes literally so naked, that it is almost disgusting for any person to see him in that situation. Another man I have known upon the town these fifteen or twenty years; he is a young man as nimble as any man can be. I have seen him fencing with the other people, and jumping about as you would see a man that was practised in the pugilistic art. He goes generally without a hat, with a waistcoat with his arms thrust through, and his arms bare, with a canvass bag at his back; he begins generally by singing some sort of a song, for he has the voice of a decent ballad-singer. He takes primroses or something in his hand, and generally goes limping or crawling in such a way, that any person would suppose he could not step one foot before another. I have also seen him, if a Bow-street officer or beadle came in sight, walk off the ground as quickly as most people. There is a man who has had a very genteel education, and has been in the medical line, an Irishman; that man writes a most beautiful hand, and he principally gets his livelihood by writing petitions for those kind of people, of various descriptions; whether truth or falseshood I know not, but I have seen him writing them, for which he gets from sixpence to a shilling.

"Do you know whether they change their beats?—I have seen them come out from twenty to thirty out of the bottom of a street, formerly called Dyt Street, now called George Street. They branch off, five or six together, one one way, another another. Invariably, before they get to any great distance, they go into a liquor-shop, and if one amongst them has saved (and it is rare but one of them saves some of the wreck of his fortune over night), he sets them off with a pint of gin, or half a pint of gin amongst them, before they set out. Then they trust to the day for raising the contributions necessary for their subsistence in the evening. They have all their divisions. The town is quartered into sections and divisions, and they go one part one way, another part another. In regard to the mendicity of people begging with children, I can give a little information upon that. There is one person, of an acute nature, who is practised in the art of begging, will collect three, four, or five children from different parents of the lower class of people, and will give those parents 6d. or even more per day, for those children to go begging with. They go in those kind of gangs, and make a very great noise, setting the children sometimes crying in order to extort charity from the people. I had an opportunity of seeing a number of those cases, being a parish officer. They will sometimes have the audacity to come to the Board for relief, which we have four days a-week: there is a great deal of money given in St Giles's. They will, if necessary, swear they are all their own children, and being, in general, of Irish parents (wherever the tree falls it must lie), consequently they get some relief till we can make proper inquiry; but, in a very short time, they are found out, for we generally send to the place they come from; but the landlords and landladies are so cunning, they would swear that the whole of those children belonged to them. But we have people of their own class, to whom we are obliged to give something to detect the impositions we are liable to, for we are often imposed upon.

A great many of those cases were before me last year as a parish officer; where a woman had been in the habit of receiving 5s. a-week, and at last a woman of her own country came forward, and taxed her that three of the children were not her own. We never saw them again, but they went into other parishes, such as Mary-le-bone, St Andrew's, and other parishes, and sought relief there; they know we cannot remove them. We have had other persons whose families are their own, and when they have a habit of begging, and get a good deal of money by that trade, they will not go to work. But we have complaints from a variety of persons round Bedford and Bloomsbury Square, of those persons being nuisances. And when the parties have come to the Board, we have offered them the house to come in with wife and children:—"No; I expect my husband home very soon, and I will not come into the house." In those cases we get rid of them, but we invariably offer them the house. When they will not take it, then we stop the relief, for I think the house is the best thing for a family of children, and a distressed family of that description."

Mr William Dorrel, inspector of the pavement of St Giles's and St George, Bloomsbury, said,—"One evening I was coming down Tottenham-court Road; a man and a woman, both beggars, were quarrelling. The man swore at the woman very much, and told her to go down to such a place, and he would follow her. I said to myself, I will see this out. She appeared to be pregnant, and very near her time. I went down to Sheen's, I think he sent her there. There was a quarrel, and he said, 'I will do for you presently,' and he up with his foot and kicked her, and down came a pillow stuffed with straw, or something of that kind; she was very soon delivered. I have been informed of a circumstance respecting a man of the name of Butler, that went about; he had lost one of his eyes. I am told he had been to sea. He had a dog, and walked with a stick; the dog went before him; he hit the curb-stone. People supposed he was blind of both eyes; he turned his eye up in such a way that he appeared blind. When he returned to his hotel, he could see as well as I could, and he wrote letters for his brother-beggars. This man has been dead two or three months."

The following is a curious fact, testified by Mr T. A. Finnigan, master of the Catholic Free School in St Giles's.—"About two years ago, there was an old woman who kept a night-school, not for the purpose of instructing children to spell and read, but for the sole purpose of teaching them the street language, that is, to scold; this was for females particularly. One female child, according to the woman's declaration to me, would act the part of Mother Barlow, and the other Mother Cummins; these were the fictitious names they gave. The old woman instructed the children in all the manoeuvres of scolding and clapping their hands at each other, and making use of the sort of infamous expressions they use. This led them into the most disgraceful scenes. When these children met, if one entered into the department of the other the next day, they were prepared to defend their station, and to excite a mob."

This is nearly the whole of the information which is contained in this celebrated Report, with regard to the arts which are employed by the beggars of the metropolis. We shall next consider the estimate which ought to be formed of their gettings. On this subject also exists a great bias to exaggeration. Both the Committee, and these witnesses, with certain exceptions, appear to have been led by it.

Mr Gurney had heard of one individual who boasted that he could with ease earn 5s. a-day; that he would go through sixty streets, and that it was a poor street that would not bring him a penny. Sir Nathaniel Conant, however, being asked, "Did it ever come to your knowledge, what any of the mendicants got?" made answer,—"I have heard very large sums stated, but I disbelieve many of them; I have not known of money being found about them; there are a good many very impudent fellows certainly about the streets, who are very troublesome: those who have been taken up have been seldom found with more than a shilling or two, but I believe some of them had hoarded at home. There was a woman brought before me, when I acted at Marlborough-street, who had a caddy in which there were nine or ten guineas hoarded."

Joseph Butterworth, Esq. a member of the Committee, stated as an inference from credible information which he had received respecting their mode of spending, that their daily acquisitions would not be less than from 8s. to 5s. each. One particular girl, however, whom he examined, stated that 1s. 6d. was the common amount of what she was able to collect, though on some days she made as much as 4s. or 5s.

Mr Sampson Stevenson was asked,—"Has it fallen within your knowledge what the largest sums are that have been gained by beggars in the course of the day?—That I have been unable to ascertain, but I have heard them brag of 6s., 7s., or 8s. a-day, or more, according to their luck, as they call it; and if one gets more than the others, they divide it with the rest."

It appears from the words themselves of the evidence on this point, that it is insufficient to prove anything. It is either the result of hearsay, which hearsay was probably the result of conjecture, not of knowledge; or it is founded on what the beggars themselves have said, when in a boasting humour; that is, when actuated with a desire to make their gettings appear as large as possible, and when, of course, their own declarations about the amount of them are, as evidence, of little or no value.

6. The ground on which the opinion of the great profits of begging seems chiefly to be founded, is the notion which is entertained of their expensive mode of living. It is therefore necessary, before we adduce the remarks which appear to be called for on the subject of profits, to state the evidence which has been furnished on the subject of expense.

The Reverend William Gurney was asked,—"Have you understood that the beggars' walks are considered as a sort of property?—Yes; I have no doubt of it; they never interfere one with another.

"And that a blind man stationed at a particular place, drives away others who interfere?—Yes; and they have their rules and their carousings: There is a house in Kent Street, where I have seen a great fat man, who moves himself about on a wooden board. When I lived near the Kent road, I have seen eight or ten of these persons go into a miserable house in the lower part of Kent Street. I have seen tables set; one a very long table covered with a coarse cloth, but a clean one; and there was something roasting: I was afraid to go in, on account of this man, who was a very violent one; this man was among the rest; they were going to have their dinner at the fashionable hour of seven. There was a cripple among them, who used to be at St George's Chapel in St George's Fields; he used to lie there, and pretend to hold out a pamphlet; he was weak about the loins, and his legs folded under him. I really believe the stories which have been told are not exaggerated.

"Have you any opportunity of knowing that the bread they eat is always of the best?—Yes; they would never eat any but the best wheaten bread."

This evidence proves but little. It is solely by conjecture, Mr Gurney here infers that there was any considerable expence.

Sir Daniel Williams was asked,—"Do you know their mode of life?—There was, in a situation called Church Lane, Whitechapel, some years ago a house of resort of beggars, which was well known to all that class of people in every part of the metropolis, by the name of The Beggar's Opera: the sign of the public-house was the Weaver's Arms, but its slang name was The Beggar's Opera: At the period I am mentioning, these beggars used to resort there of an evening, after having perambulated their different circuits, and lived well; they spent a considerable portion of money, would have hot suppers dressed, and regale themselves with beer, punch, and often other liquor still more expensive."

How unfortunate, and at the same time how strange it is, that not a single question was put to this gentleman, to ascertain whether he knew this by hearsay, or by observation. We are constrained to conclude that it was only by hearsay; because, had he seen the facts, it would have been natural to say so; and because we are never entitled to make an inference stronger than the premises on which it depends.

Mr Butterworth describes scenes of a similar sort, but has attention enough to accuracy to say, that he is only credibly informed of the things which he states. Not a question is put to him about the sources whence his information is derived; much less are any of the persons who gave it brought before the Committee, who ought not to have been contented with the hearsay, when they might have had the original evidence. Mr Butterworth did, indeed, volunteer (for he was not provoked to it by any interrogation) the description of one person. "I know," he said, "a sober hackney-coachman, upon whose veracity I can depend, who has frequently conveyed beggars to their lodgings; and formerly, when he plied in St Giles's, has been called to the public houses which they haunt, to take them from thence, being so intoxicated they could not walk home." If this information of the hackney-coachman was of any value, how wrong it was not to call the hackney-coachman, and get his own information from himself? According to what appears from Mr Butterworth's words, he might have conveyed a beggar from those houses, either twice or two hundred times in his life.

This is a very imperfect mode of collecting evidence.

The only person who gives anything that resembles the evidence of his own observation upon the subject is Mr Sampson Stevenson. He was asked,—"Have you had an opportunity of making observations, on the character of street beggars?—A great deal; not only before I was officer, but having been led by being officer to look into the matter, I have made great observations, because there was a house which those kind of people used, not above eight yards from my own house; complaint being made, the nuisance was done away."

"Have you had an opportunity of making particular inquiry into the character of individual beggars?—I have; in fact, I made inquiry, not only of the landlord, but of some of those who seemed to be of a superior class, or petition writers; that was before I was overseer. A year or two ago this house lost its licence; it not only encouraged those kind of people, but people guilty of felonies, and so on. This threw them into other quarters; and they made their residence at a public-house called The Fountain, in King-street, Seven Dials, where they assembled not only at night, but in a morning before they started upon their daily occupations, as they express it; I have seen them come in. As it is a house, the landlord of which is very respectable, and has a family, I have gone into the bar on purpose to see their manner of going on; that is very near the tap-room: They come at night, perhaps individuals, and likewise those sailors, or pretended sailors, in a body; but those who go one and two together come also: those who are sailors never take anything on their backs like knapsacks, for they only beg or extort money; but the others beg clothing, or anything they can get, and they always have a knapsack to put it in; they will come loaded with shoes and various habiliments, which, being near Monmouth-street, the place where they translate old shoes into new ones, they sell, and likewise the clothing. I have heard them say, that they have made 3s. or 4s. a-day in begging shoes, for sometimes they got shoes that really were very good ones; and their mode of exciting charity for shoes is, invariably, to go barefooted, and scarify their feet and heels with something or another to cause the blood as it were to flow. I have seen them in that situation many times; and thus they sally out to their different departments, but invariably changing their routes each day, for one is scarcely ever seen in the same direction two days together, but another takes his situation. I have seen them myself; I never saw them outside: but I have seen considerable sums of money pulled out and shared amongst them, both collectively and those who go two or three together. Victuals I do not think I ever saw brought into that place, for I rather think they throw it away when they get it. Mostly shoes and clothing, and such things as those, which they sell immediately. They stop as long as the house they use is open, and get violently drunk, and quarrel with one another, and very frequently fight; after that they are not allowed to remain, if they were, the licence would be stopped; and very likely there are houses in St Giles's where they spend the other part, if they have any left.

"What is their general character?—They are people that are initiated in this mode of begging; one teaches another their modes of extorting, for I can call it nothing else but extorting: And they are of the worst of characters, characters whose blasphemy it is almost impossible to repeat; they will follow you in a street for a length of space, and if they do not receive money, they give a great torrent of abuse, even all the time you may hear them. Most of them have no lodgings. There are houses where there are forty or fifty of them, like a jail, the porter stands at the door and takes the money; for 3d. they have clean straw, or something like it; for those who pay 4d. there is something more decent; for 6d. they have a bed; they are all locked in for the night, lest they should take the property. In the morning there is a general muster below. I have asked country paupers who have come for relief, how they have been entertained, they say, Very badly: they have gone there. The servants go and examine all the places, to see that all is free from felony; and then they are let out into the street, just as you would open the door of a jail, and let out forty or fifty of them together, and at night they come again; they have no settled habitations, but those places to which they resort: but there are numbers of those houses in St Giles's."

Most of the statements in this declaration are very loose and vague. Yet not a question is put by the Committee to ascertain how far the witness had actually seen and heard, and how far he merely conjectured. No; he is allowed to make up a compound of what he saw, and what he conjectured, just as he pleased, and to leave the ingredients without any distinction. In several things he is palpably and grossly erroneous. For example, he supposes that beggars in general throw away the victuals which they collect. It is likely that they should take the trouble of collecting any thing merely to throw it away! It is likely they should throw away that for which they might get money! Besides, the assertion is contrary to what is actually delivered in evidence to the Committee; the fact, that there are places in St Giles's where the commodity is regularly bought, and where those who have collected it go to sell it.

Nothing is more common, in cases of this sort, than to receive a violent impression from the strong cases, however few; to overlook and forget the small cases, however numerous; and from the strong cases solely to draw every inference to the whole. There are strong marks of this imperfection in the evidence which is given in this Report. Mr Stevenson, for example, in the passage which has just been quoted, gives it, without any restriction whatsoever, as a general characteristic of the beggars of whom he speaks, to be very abusive when their applications are refused. Now, this may safely be pronounced as one of the rarest occurrences. The writer of this article may give his own evidence. He has lived above fifteen years in the metropolis: he has walked more than most people, both in the streets of London, and in the roads and fields immediately surrounding it: he never gives anything to a casual beggar: he has been accosted by thousands of beggars: he cannot at this moment recollect that, in the whole course of that experience, he ever met with one abusive word: but he has a hundred times received a "Thank you, Sir," with a bow or a curtsey from the little boys and girls whom he has refused and repulsed, and to whom it is evident that such a lesson is taught by those on whom their conduct depends. The imposturous beggar, in fact, knows his art too well to lose his temper; and the spirit of the age, so much improved, renders a mild deportment necessary to the success even of the worst employment.

Of this evidence about the great gains of beggars, some parts are directly and strongly opposed to the rest.

Thus we are told that they eat and drink most voluptuously; we are also told that their sleeping places are wretched beyond description. But why should this be, if they were able to afford, in this respect, a higher degree of comfort? Notwithstanding what we are told about their delicate feeding, we are also told that there are eating-houses to which the beggars resort, and in which they buy the scraps of victuals, collected at doors, which the beggars who have collected beyond their own consumption there dispose of. This is no proof that they are generally able to cultivate delicacy.

So slight an exercise of reflection is sufficient to show that the gain of beggars must of necessity be wretched, that one is astonished at the proof which is exhibited of the inattention of mankind, by the number of persons who believe the contrary. According to the principle of population, which supposes a greater number of hands than can find employment, the ordinary occupations and trades may all be regarded as overstocked. The lowest is necessarily the most overstocked of all; because the hands which overflow from the rest are all driven downwards, and the lowest receives the overplus of the whole. The lowest species of occupation is, therefore, of necessity underpaid; that is to say, the wages of the labourer are not sufficient to maintain him with such a family as is necessary to keep the number of labourers, in that occupation, at its existing amount. But it must necessarily be, that the gains of beggars, upon the whole, that is, the gains of an average beggar, are below, and considerably below, the earnings of individuals in the lowest and worst paid species of labour. If it were not, it would follow, that the wretched starving people, employed in the lowest, naturally the hardest and most pain- ful, species of labour, of consent, will choose to receive a small sum with hard and painful labour, when they might receive a larger sum without any labour at all; it would follow that, out of a multitude, amounting to the greater part of the population, all, or all but an insignificant portion, are endowed with this degree of heroic virtue. This would be to suppose a sensibility to moral considerations which, in the circumstances, of an oppressive and degrading poverty, is utterly incompatible with the laws of human nature.

We regard it, therefore, as a matter of demonstration, that the earnings of beggars, as a class, are considerably below the earnings of the worst paid class of labourers.

With this conclusion, however, it is very compatible to suppose, that individuals in the class of beggars, those who have more skill and industry than the rest, may attain to considerable gains; as it is evidently an occupation in which a greater or less degree of skill in working upon the attention and sympathy of mankind must make a considerable difference. The greater you suppose the gains of these skilled individuals to be, the smaller, of course, must you suppose the number of those who make them.

7. We have now exhibited what appears to be the result of all the evidence yet before the public, respecting the actual state of mendicity. The information is exceedingly imperfect, while it is certainly not very creditable to the legislation of our country to be thus ignorant upon such a subject.

It remains for us to present what the existing state of information enables us to discover with regard to the causes which operate in this, our own country, to the production of mendicity; in the next place, to explain the effects which it is of the nature of mendicity to produce; and, in the last place, to give a list of the operations which appear likely to be the most powerful in effecting a remedy,—the object and end of the inquiry.

8. With respect to the causes of British mendicity, it will be useful, in the first place, to give what dropped in detail from the witnesses before the Committee.

The cause of which they first begin to speak, is what we may call, in one word, soldiering, or the unfavourable change produced in the minds and in the circumstances, both of individuals and of families, when the individuals, or those on whom they depend, become soldiers. There is nothing to which the minds of the witnesses appear to be carried more frequently than to this.

Edward Quin, Esq. a member of the establishment for sending the poor Irish to their own country, speaking of the persons whom they send, declares: "Most of those parties have been, I should imagine nine out of twelve, either in the army or navy, and mostly with families, who have no means whatever of returning home, except, perhaps, a temporary pass, twopence a mile, or a penny a mile; we have known a man, with a wife and six children, coming from the Peninsula, sometimes with 9d. or 1s. or 2s. a-day."

He makes a curious declaration with regard to the Irish, who are already begging in England. The establishment thinks it is better to have them in England, as "to send them to Ireland, where there is no provision for them, would be doing them no good."

Mr Colquhoun, the celebrated magistrate, and our grand instructor on the subject of police, being asked for his opinion of the causes of mendicity, said,— "It does appear that there are various classes of mendicants, which are all pretty numerous: First, those that are beggars by profession, who are the immediate objects of the attention of the police. Secondly, those that, from temporary pressure in the winter season, and other seasons when work is slack, or they have any special pressure upon them, fall into want, such as the wives and families of soldiers, when their husbands are abroad; or when, from sickness, the head of the family is out of work, many of them have no resource but to ask alms in the streets; that class is forced to do so from the inadequate allowance the parishes can make them, partly arising from their not being parishioners, and arising also from the circumstance of the small sum the parishes can afford to allow, which seldom exceeds the weekly sum required for a miserable lodging. The next class, I am sorry to say, are persons, and they are pretty numerous, who have allowances from Greenwich Hospital, or who are Chelsea pensioners; they carry on the trade of begging to a pretty considerable extent. Strangers wander up to town, of which there are a great number, in search of work, with their families, and are disappointed, in consequence of the scarcity of labour, from the supply being greater than the demand; which has been evident to me, and very much so, from attending the very unpleasant duty of appeals against parish rates, and that discloses very often a great number of people out of employ: a number of those who have been wandering up, as well as those stationary in town, do obtain some subsistence, I apprehend, from begging. Those are all the different classes which occur to me at present."

Mr Davis, the agent by whom all persons taken up as beggars and vagrants in London and Middlesex, and passed to other counties, are conveyed, speaking of the difficulty of keeping them from running away, says,—"But the girls that come up with the soldiers are the worst we have; down at Woolwich or at Greenwich, sometimes I have a whole coach-load brought up at a time, some going one way, some another; if it is possible to get away, they will. Some of them say, We must go out of your district, but we will not promise to go all the way home."

The Edinburgh Society, also, for the suppression of beggars, say, in their first Report,

"The widows, where not charity work-house cases, were generally found burdened with families, frequently the widows of soldiers killed in battle. The married women were either old, or with families, their husbands being labourers out of employment, or soldiers abroad, many of whom had once enjoyed the county allowance as militiamen's wives, but who had been deprived of that resource in consequence of their husbands having volunteered into regiments of the line. There seems some reason to apprehend that the allowance to the wives and families of militiamen is gradually eradicating that pride which, with the lower ranks in this country, made parish support disgraceful, and the resource only of the utterly helpless and friendless."

We shall not lengthen this article by pointing out, because they are obvious to all, the circumstances attached to soldiering, by which it necessarily becomes a great source of beggary. These instances are sufficient to prove the impression which has been made by the facts upon the minds of those who have been situated most favourably for observing them.

The next circumstance which is stated by the witnesses before the Committee as a cause of multiplying beggars, is the state lottery. It is added by more of the witnesses than one, but we must remain satisfied with a specimen. Mr Wakefield was asked, "You have mentioned the lottery, as the second cause; have you any facts to state, justifying that opinion?—I beg to state a very strong instance of an apparently industrious man, who applied to the committee of the Spitalfields Soup Society for relief; he was told, that his appearance did not indicate want; and his mode of living was asked. He said he was a 'Translator,' which is a business of buying old shoes and boots, and translating them into wearable ones. Inquiry was then made, if he had such a business, why he should then apply for relief; and he answered, as a matter of course, that the lottery was drawing, or about to draw. 'Why, how can that affect your business?'—'I have no sale for boots or shoes during the time that the lottery draws.' Inquiry was then made as to the truth of the statement, and it was found to be the case, and that he was an industrious and respectable man; and that it was only on account of the loss of his trade that he was brought into that distress.

"How long ago was that?—Two or three years ago; the money went, of course, either in the purchase of tickets, or the payment of insurances in the lottery."

Almost all the witnesses who deliver any opinion upon the causes of mendicity, mention the use of intoxicating liquors as one of the greatest. It is needless, we conceive, to adduce the testimony of any individual in this case. The only mistake, of which there is any danger, in respect to this cause, is the ascribing to it more effects than it produces. Though mischievous, in proportion to the quantity, by every drop that is consumed, it will account for but a small portion of the mischief which we behold.

Local demands for temporary labour often affect the poor very unfavourably. A passage already quoted from the evidence of Mr Gurney, shows in what manner a great number of persons crowding to the vicinity of London in the hay season, are driven or seduced into habits of beggary.

One cause of beggary may here be mentioned, which has not attracted all the attention which it deserves. That is, the mode in which we allow certain classes of the people to pay themselves by a sort of begging. In these unhappy circumstances we allow post-boys, stage-coachmen, and various other classes to be placed. One sort of begging is nearly allied to another. Of the same tendency is the practice by which servants take, and by their well known expectations beg, gratuities from their master's guests. All these are degrading practices, which bring down the mind to the mendicant level. We have no doubt whatsoever, that, of this sort of people, a greater proportion than of others, recruit the ranks of mendicity.

Almost all the witnesses represent the want of education, as standing high in the list of the causes of mendicity. Some of them who had used the greatest range of observation, spoke of this cause with extraordinary emphasis; and of the powerful effects of schooling, as giving that sense of honour to the people, which makes them willing rather to die than to beg. We shall not enlarge upon this cause, which would afford materials for a volume. It is enough, in this place, to mark the importance which the mere outward observation of practical men has drawn them to attach to it.

The poor laws stand branded by the witnesses as perhaps the most prolific of all the causes of beggary. The object of the poor laws is the very reverse. They are, by this account, the greatest cause of that which they were contrived to prevent. By making a sure provision for every body reduced to want, all motive for begging was expected to be taken away. The legislator looked only to one thing; where he had a great many things to which he ought to have looked.

Mr John Stafford, the chief clerk of the Police-office in Bow-street, said,—"I think it might prevent a considerable number of persons becoming beggars, if there was greater facility given to the magistrates to compel parish-officers to relieve poor persons who are in want, and unable to work or provide for themselves; for, as the law stands now, if a poor person comes to the magistrate to complain that he is in a state of distress, and does not know what to do to obtain relief, that person must apply to two overseers of the poor, who may refuse relief. The magistrate must then summon the two overseers to appear before him; and it is not until after they appear, or have made default, that he is enabled to make any order upon the parish-officers to relieve those persons; so that, in cases where the parish-officers are from home, or when they live at any distance, it requires frequently a day or two before a return to the summons can be procured; then, unless anything can be done in the meantime, the paupers have no means of obtaining relief, but by soliciting charity."

Sir Nathaniel Conant, the magistrate, describes the same evil in nearly the same words. Respecting the beggars produced by this cause he was asked,— "Do you think they constitute a large proportion of the beggars in London?—I cannot state that; there are a great many, almost all the persons not actually known in a parish, who have occasion to apply for parish relief, apply in their last extremity. They are shifted about from post to pillar for two or three days, before they can obtain relief. They beg at the corner of a street; they are taken up by the watch-man; and when they are found to belong to a parish, they are let out, instead of being taken to the overseers. I conceive a good many of those who run after the passengers are in that situation. I con- ceive that, if they could go to the parish-officers at the moment of casualty, they would not be in the streets.

On this head, however, the information afforded by Mr Martin is the most important. It appeared by the Inquiry, of which he was the principal organ, into the State of Mendicity in the Metropolis, that about one half of the beggars in the metropolis in reality belonged to the parishes in the metropolis, and were there entitled to relief. This is most assuredly, in the account of English mendicity, a very extraordinary fact. It is worth while to give the proportions, as they exhibited themselves upon this Inquiry:

CLASS I. PAROCHIAL INDIVIDUALS.

<table> <tr> <th></th> <th>Of Home Parishes; inclusive of</th> <th></th> </tr> <tr> <td>about</td> <td>1,384 children, about 2,231</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <th></th> <th>Of Distant Parishes; inclusive of</th> <th></th> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td>489 ditto - 868</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <th colspan="2">Total Parochial Children,</th> <th></th> </tr> <tr> <td>about</td> <td>1,873</td> <td></td> </tr> <tr> <th colspan="2">Total Parochial Individuals, about</th> <th>3,999</th> </tr> </table>

CLASS II. NON-PAROCHIAL INDIVIDUALS.

<table> <tr> <th></th> <th>Irish; inclusive of about</th> <th>1,091 children, about 1,770</th> </tr> <tr> <th></th> <th>Scotch; inclusive of</th> <th>103 ditto - 168</th> </tr> <tr> <th></th> <th>Foreign; inclusive of</th> <th>29 ditto - 59</th> </tr> <tr> <th colspan="2">Total Non-Parochial Children, about</th> <th>1,223</th> </tr> <tr> <th colspan="2">Total Non-Parochial Individuals, about</th> <th>1,997</th> </tr> <tr> <th colspan="2">Total Children on the 2,000 cases, about</th> <th>3,096</th> </tr> <tr> <th colspan="2">Total Individuals on the 2,000 cases, about</th> <th>5,096</th> </tr> </table>

Mr Martin observes, "It may appear extraordinary, that the parochial poor should be found to furnish above one half of the general mass of beggars in the metropolis. There are, however, two causes particularly affecting the parochial poor, which have doubtless contributed to reduce many of them to a state of beggary; viz.

"1. The practice, generally prevailing in the metropolis, of refusing relief to paupers out of the work-house; and,

"2. The want of a provision by law, to direct, in particular cases, adequate relief to parochial poor, not resident within the limits of their legal settlements."

It was observed to him, "If it be real distress and not imposture, it should appear that the proper place to apply for relief would be the place of their own settlement?—It is astonishing how ignorant the poor people are. A great many live in a contiguous parish to that to which they are chargeable, then they are afraid of the law which directs they should be either imprisoned or whipped, or removed home, in case they apply for relief; and some, who have been in better conditions in life, are very delicate in making their distresses known at all.

"Have you ascertained that?—Yes; even when I have written, I have frequently found the testimony in some degree corroborated I have received before; there may have been a variation in a few circumstances, but the general statement has been often true in those cases with which the committee would be most surprised. A woman mentioned a great deal of property abroad (I think in one of the West India Islands) some time ago; I found there was ground for a great part of what she said, but not the whole.

"You think those persons did not know where to apply, till you informed them?—In many instances they did not know how to apply, or they have been so intimidated by the letter of the law they were afraid.

"Do you think a large proportion of those who applied, became beggars and applied for relief to you, because they did not choose to go to their parish?—I think there were some, but their motives for that were very various; in many cases it was entirely timidity.

"You have mentioned in your printed letter of 1811, as one of the causes for beggary, the want of a provision by law to direct, in particular cases, adequate relief to parochial poor not resident within the limits of their legal settlement; what do you mean by that?—I mean, that supposing there is a man belonging to Liverpool who is a coachmaker's smith for instance, or in some employ in London, and that he falls into temporary distress by sickness; the distress of that family is enhanced, and often goes to the excess of making the wife pawn even the working tools of her husband: if they could immediately go to any magistrate, and claim the necessary relief, to be afterwards refunded by their parish, that distress would be prevented."

To Mr Colquhoun, the magistrate, it was observed,—"You have given it as your opinion, in your Treatise on Indigence, that among the causes of vagrancy is the hardship and dread of removals?—I look upon the removal as one of the greatest evils attaching to the pauper system; if that could be done away by legislative regulation, so as to let the burthen fall equally upon the country at large, that would do more to reduce the rates than any thing else; it is a lamentable thing. I know in the year 1800, that in Braintree and Bocking in Essex, although the average of the whole country was not above 5s. 6d. in the pound, they paid actually 40s. in the pound for poor rates, which amounted nearly to a disinherition of property, in the hands, perhaps, since William the Conqueror, of some of the proprietors; and I know of property which would let for L.200 a year in any other part of the country, letting for L.20: And I remember another instance, of a person who had established a nursery; he was rated for that nursery L.70 a year; it had cost him L.800; and the question with him was, whether it would not be better to abandon it than sustain the burthen. Wherever you see in England the finest surface of country, such as Hertfordshire, and all the southern counties, there you have the greatest portion of poverty: In Sussex, by the last returns, it was 25 in the hundred, that was, a fourth part of the population; in Cumberland, five; in Lancashire, where we should expect more poor than any other, from the fluctuation of labour, 17.

"Do you conceive, that the system of removals at once adds considerably to the expence of the rates, and is a great grievance to the morals of the poor? Beggar.—That it degrades the poor to a very great degree is certain; and that it adds to the rates, but mostly in the metropolis. The managers of the poor are very willing, thinking to get rid of them in a short time, to maintain them, rather than send them to a remote quarter; if it is within 20 or 30 miles, they will remove them, but if it is 200 miles off they do not go to the expence.

"Then they must have the paupers perpetually upon them?—They are in hopes of soon getting rid of them; they often go into the house from the sickness of the head of the family, or from various casualties; they are in hopes things may come round."

Of the existing system of extraordinary laws concerning the poor in England, that part which relates to the whipping and imprisoning of persons found soliciting alms, is represented by the witnesses as one of the grand sources of evil; because it is a law which the present state of humanity will not allow, in ordinary cases, to be executed. The whipping is regularly and totally disused. The putting a wretched being into an English prison is not a way to elevate his mind, and place him above the base thoughts of beggary. It is likely to make him more regardless of all moral, very often of all legal restraints; and where he went in a beggar, to come out a thief. Upon the atrocious cruelty of driving a wretched creature to beggary, in the way explained above, by refusing prompt assistance, and then whipping or imprisoning for an act of such necessity, no comment is required.

Into the mischievous tendency of the principle upon which the system of the English poor laws is built, holding out a premium for worthlessness, and for that excessive multiplication of the people, to which a state of general wretchedness is attached, we shall not at present enter. It will come to be considered, where the poor, and the policy regarding them, become the subjects of discussion. What, in this place, chiefly calls for attention, is the course of procedure and detail, in the hands of the parish officers; not as a system of waste and of oppression upon the contribution, nor as a system of tyranny and vexation to the paupers, but as a mode of making beggars. This they do, by their modes both of giving and withholding relief. They give it under such circumstances as to make people fly from it to beggary; they withhold it in such a manner as both to compel and seduce them into beggary. Mr Gurney was asked,—"What is the police establishment of your parish?—We have four beadles and six constables, besides special constables occasionally; but there is a great terror and alarm on the minds of the parish officers of all the parishes, lest the work-house should be overstocked, and lest the parish should be burthened; and, as long as persons get their livelihood without looking to them, though it is by pilfering, unless they actually know that they are pilfering, they take no notice. I have often thought that if many of our poor laws were imperative, instead of permissive, it would be useful; and I am afraid many of the parish officers are ignorant of their duty, as well as the beadles and constables.

"Do you know whether persons confined in the work-houses, and relieved there, are ever let out of those work-houses for the purpose of begging, in the course of the day?—They go out on the Sunday generally, and I believe many of them beg, indeed I am pretty sure of it."

As a cause of beggary, it is necessary here to mention early and improvident marriages, and all those other proceedings which tend to increase procreation beyond the measure of subsistence, and thus to keep the great mass of the people sunk near to the level of mendicity,—a proximity from which, by the slightest accident, many of them are continually falling down to it altogether. That this is the grand medium through which beggary is produced, it is needless to offer any proof. The mode in which the principle of population, when injudiciously encouraged, instead of being wisely restrained, operates to the degradation of the people, has been already, in part, explained; and it will be still farther elucidated in a subsequent article of this work.

Among the causes of beggary in England, one may be regarded as pretty remarkable, that is, Ireland. Ireland is one of the greatest of all the causes of beggary in England. Considerably more than one-third of all the beggars in the metropolis appear to be Irish. Of all human beings in any part of the globe, the mass of the Irish appear to be in the most deplorable circumstances, whether their moral or physical situation be considered; and that under a government regarded as the best in the world. The art of making governments efficient to the purposes of government is, therefore, still but imperfectly understood.

Some of the witnesses, Mr Colquhoun in particular, bring forward a very important subject. They give the state of the criminal laws as one of the chief among the causes of mendicity.—"About 5000 individuals," he says, "are vomited out of the jails, without character. These people come on society, without any asylum provided for them. If such an asylum could be established, I think, in a very short time, it would relieve the town of a great many of the beggars." The operation of the penal laws upon the moral state of the people is a field of inquiry far too extensive to be introduced into the present article. That an ill-contrived system of correction for offences may degrade the minds of a people, destroy their sensibility to moral considerations, render many of them incapable of that self-esteem, on which the abhorrence of becoming a beggar is founded, nobody can help perceiving. That a great part of the British system of penal law is infected with this tendency, has long been the complaint of discerning and philosophic minds. The public is not a little indebted to the popular writings of Mr Colquhoun, for the degree of attention from men in power which it cannot long be hindered from receiving. Another place in this work will be found for giving to the subject that degree of elucidation which it so highly deserves.

Of all the causes of beggary, war may undoubtedly be assumed as one of the most extraordinary. We have already seen in what manner the people converted by it into soldiers swell the ranks of mendicity; but this is only a small part of the deplorable effects. It brings the condition of the whole of the labouring mass down nearer to the mendicant level; and, of course, a new and additional portion down to it altogether. This it does by the consumption which it produces. Exactly in proportion as money is spent upon war, exactly in that proportion is the means of employing labour, that is, of buoying up the condition of the people, destroyed; exactly in that proportion must the people, ceteris paribus, sink. These are conclusions which may be regarded as scientific, and which will never be called in dispute except by those who are ignorant of the subject. It is not impossible for war to be accidentally accompanied with circumstances which counterbalance this tendency, even in respect to wealth; but this is exceedingly rare. The great men very often gain by war: the little almost always lose.

There is one other cause of mendicity, which it is incumbent to mention, because it really includes all the rest; but it can be very little more than mentioned, as it is far too extensive for elucidation in this place. This cause is legislation,—bad legislation. An argument, which, though it is too general deeply to impress a mind unaccustomed to generalize, is in fact almost demonstrative, may be given in a few words. Perfect legislation, a legislation capable of turning to the best possible account the command which in this world man possesses over the good things of life, would so conduct society, that, as there would be scarcely any individual who would not, by his moral qualities, deserve, so there would be not one who would be left without the means of corporeal well-being. If this proposition be correct, it follows, as an unavoidable consequence, that every beggar who exists is, in some way or another, the effect and consequence of bad laws. Exactly in proportion as we can make our laws do more of that which all laws ought to do, we shall diminish the number of those who approach the level of mendicity; and at last dry up every source from which it springs. And in the meantime, exactly in proportion as a greater number of the mass of any people are either at, or approach to, the level of mendicity, in that proportion infallibly may the laws be pronounced to be bad.

9. We have now stated what the present occasion appears to require, on the subject of the causes of mendicity. We proceed to the effects, which, being a much less complicated subject, will be much more quickly dispatched.

The effects may be considered as bad, first, in respect to the beggar himself; next, in respect to the community.

With respect to the beggar himself, they are bad exactly in so far as he is less happy in that state, than he would have been in any other in which it is in his power to place himself. If it was not in his power to have placed himself in a situation above suffering to a greater degree for want of the means of well-being, he suffers nothing bodily; perhaps he even gains, if the bodily pains of begging are less than those of the labour to which he would have been doomed. He may suffer in his mind, by the sense of degradation. But when that ceases to be an object, this pain is at an end. In as far as he is likely to be more intemperate as a beggar, he injures his health, and destroys the pleasures of sympathy. And in as far as he is less religious than he would otherwise have been, he is a loser in respect to the hopes which religion bestows.

If he has fallen to beggary, by his misconduct, from a superior state, in which he would have enjoyed more happiness; of this loss, whatever it is, beggary is not the cause, but the previous misconduct. The question is not, what he would have been, had he not lost what he has lost by misconduct, but what, having made that loss, he can now do that would make him happier than begging. If a mind is well educated, and its sensibility to moral considerations acute, almost anything would render it happier than begging. If it is in the brutal state of an uneducated mind,—a mind which has never had its moral sensibility sharpened, few things would render it happier that did not afford it in greater plenty the means of sensual indulgence and ease.

These, such as these, are the considerations by which we should endeavour to estimate the loss of happiness which beggary produces to the generality of beggars themselves.

Let us next endeavour to estimate what is lost through it by the community to which the beggar belongs.

There is, first, the loss of his labour, provided he was able to work. He consumes without producing. In this particular he is equally mischievous with every useless soldier, every useless functionary of the state, and not more. Not so much, indeed, as often as their consumption is greater than his.

If the beggar is unable to work, the public, in a pecuniary sense, loses nothing by his beggary, because, it being not proposed to let him die of hunger, he would have been maintained in all events.

What remains, exclusive of moral effects, is only the annoyance which is given to the people at large by the solicitations of beggars; by conveying to them disagreeable impressions through their eyes and their ears. We shall not reckon this for absolutely nothing. But sure we are, that all the amount of pain which in a year is produced in this country by that cause is very inconsiderable. There are exhibitions of sores and filth, and a degree of importunity which we can conceive amounting to a pretty serious nuisance. But these things, we see, it is very easy to prevent.

We come now to the moral effects produced by beggary, which, except in regard to the beggars themselves, in which respect they have been considered already, consist entirely in example; in the tendency which the immorality of beggars has to produce imitation.

But it is the privilege of beggars that their vices are not contagious. The vices of the great infect the whole community. The vices of beggars infect nobody but themselves.

We do not think it is necessary to pursue this subject. The evidence appears to be satisfactory, that beggary, when considered as a cause of evil, turns out to be a cause of no great importance. Of the inconveniences sustained by the nation, a very small portion can be traced to beggary. For even the loss of labour, which is the main article, is very inconsiderable, as the number of able-bodied mendicants is very small, compared with that of the very young, the very old, the mutilated, and diseased.

In the case of beggary, as of many other results in an imperfect state of the social union, the disapprobation and hatred of the mind are very apt to be misplaced. We abhor beggary, but it is the causes out of which beggary springs, and from which, along with begging, infinite other evils arise, that deserve almost all our abhorrence.

10. We come now to consider the remedies which may be applied to the disease of beggary; the fácienda, in short, the things to be done for its removal.

The first and most natural course would be to go to the list of causes; the excess of multiplication, and consequent poverty of the mass of the people; the want of education; the poor laws; the criminal code; wars; and in one word including the whole, bad legislation. Take away the causes, and the effect immediately disappears.

As among the causes of beggary, however, there are some, and these among the most powerful, which cannot be easily or speedily removed, it remains to inquire what, in the meantime, can be done to check their operation.

The first question is, what can be done by the operation of the existing laws.

The following testimony was given by Sir Nathaniel Conant:

"You think if there was a strict execution of the laws now in force, the streets might be cleared of the beggars?—Certainly.

"In what way would they then be disposed of under the existing law?—If they were taken in the act of begging in an individual parish, they must be sent into the Bridewell for seven days at least; then a pass must be made to the place of their last settlement; if that is not found by the examination of the Justice to his satisfaction, he sends them into the place of their last residence, the place where they were taken; that parish is to fight against them as well as it can, that is, by bribery, if it can be called so, by giving them relief and letting them slip out of doors.

"What becomes of them then?—Then they begin again; the existing law will clear them, but it is only for a day.

"Then the laws, as at present constituted, are not sufficient for clearing the streets?—My answer to that would be, that the nature of such a town as this is such, that they cannot be cleared in those intervals which occur between the application and the relief given; there will be distress and hunger, which will drive the paupers to mendicity.

"Then, if they are passed to a parish near to London, they may be engaged in begging again in eight and forty hours?—Yes, in less than that; and where they are passed to distant parishes, there are perhaps only two or three farms; the occupiers of those farms are very unfit to have the care of such persons, perhaps, from their age or their sex, and very unwilling to have such pensioners.

"Can you suggest any alteration of the law, which would have the effect of clearing the streets?—I think that might be effected by a strict execution of the existing laws; but that would introduce such a degree of severity as to a considerable part, not perhaps half, that it would be quite as great as the laceration of the mind of the passenger on seeing such objects.

"The question refers to the case of persons returning to their parishes, and then beginning begging again?—The nature of the legislation of England is, that it always goes upon the idea of the whole, and not of a crowded metropolis; and it supposes the profligacy or industry of each individual to be known.

"You were understood to state, that when a person was taken up, he was sent to Bridewell for seven days, then passed to his parish, and that, if that parish was in London, he then returned to a state of mendicity. Can you suggest any alteration which would prevent the beggar who had been in Bridewell, and who had been passed to his parish, returning to a state of mendicity?—Parliament might compel the parish to maintain them until they are enabled to obtain their own livelihood, according to their age, or strength, or sex; but nothing less than that would do, for the person goes out without clothing sufficient for a decent occupation."

Sir Nathaniel had stated, that he did not give orders for taking up the beggars with all the strictness of the law, and gave the following as his reasons:—"That if I did give those orders this morning, I should have those that are impostors all run away into the next street, only so to elude the people to whom I gave the directions; and I should have blind and imbecile creatures, who had no claim at all upon the justice of the parish in which they happen to be taken, though that parish would, in the first instance, be made liable to them, if I passed them into that parish after sending them to prison for a week, which the Act of Parliament necessarily includes; for no pass can be made till they have been in prison a week. If they were passed into that parish, the parish-officers would, in their policy, and in justice to their neighbours, say, 'Why do you come here? you come here as a beggar, and have been punished; here is a shilling, go about your business, and get yourself conditioned in some other place.' They would walk down below the Tower, and beg there for another week, and then get up again into Westminster, and continue the practice of begging, having no settlement perhaps.

"Supposing the magistrates were to follow the letter of the law, might not they be all removed from the neighbourhood of the metropolis?—I think they might; I think the practice established at Edinburgh might be practised here, but with dreadful cruelty to two-thirds of the persons subjected to that mode of subsistence. In Edinburgh, they act with extreme severity to every person found in a state of mendicity."

Sir D. Williams gave the following testimony:—

"Do you take any steps, through the medium of your officers, to take up beggars?—We have given instructions generally to take up all beggars; and it has been done also by several parishes in the neighbourhood, who have directed their beadles to take them into custody.

"Is it your opinion, that if the same mode was pursued by the other magistrates in different districts, that many beggars would be prevented from pursuing that course of life?—There can be no doubt of it.

"You consider the present laws sufficiently strong, if those laws were put in force?—No doubt.

"And that if the magistrates were to put the law into force as it now exists, public begging might be prevented?—There can be no doubt of it.

"You consider that the laws might be so far put in force, as to clear the streets of beggars; have the goodness to state to the committee the process which takes place with the beggars found in your district?—Any person has a right to capture a beggar in the act of begging; he is to take him before a magistrate; the magistrate, by the confession of the party himself, or the oath of another party, is bound to pronounce him a rogue and vagabond, and send him to the House of Correction for the county of Middlesex; there he remains seven days, and is passed by the pass-master of the county to the next parish leading to his settlement, and so forward till he arrives at the place of settlement; and for which the person capturing the mendicant is allowed by law 5s.; there is a premium for it.

"Supposing the parish to which he actually belongs remains within your district, or is that in which he is found begging; there is nothing to prevent him, on his return, resuming the same practice of begging?—The law will prevent that, by sentencing him as an incorrigible rogue, to six months imprisonment, if he has been pronounced a rogue and vagabond under the first charge.

"Are those steps frequently taken by you?—They are brought before the Court, and the Court adjudges them to a further imprisonment.

"How long do they remain there?—Seven days in the first instance, and six months in the second."

Patrick Colquhoun, Esq. to whom, primarily, his Country is indebted for all the knowledge it has recently gained, and all the improvement it has made in Police, delivered the following testimony:—"Of late it is inconceivable the number that have received passes from the magistrates to go to their different parishes; which we give now, though directly in opposition to the Act of 1792, which requires they should be previously whipped or imprisoned a certain number of days, and then passed as vagrants to their parishes; that Act has been found impracticable. It arose from the Lord Mayor and the magistrates giving innumerable passes, of which I am afraid many make the very worst use; but we are very glad to get them out of the town, that they may be subsisted in the quarters to which they belong, or where they have friends; in that way we are relieved of a very considerable number, who must otherwise beg in the streets.

"Do you conceive that the laws as they at present exist relative to beggars, if put into due and strict execution by all the magistrates in London and its vicinity, would be sufficient to clear the streets of beggars?—I do not indeed; there have been attempts made at different times, and they have all failed. I think the Act of 17th Geo. II. totally inadequate to the purpose; it is loosely worded; it is not at all adapted to the present state of society; and that Act ought to be revised from the beginning, and adapted to the present state of society.

"Do you mean individual and separate attempts?—I mean to say various attempts have been made, by taking up the beggars; the expence is enormous on the county rate. I believe at one time there was more than L. 100 paid to the office I belong to, in the course of the sessions.

"If all the magistrates were to unite, the magistrates of the city of London, the magistrates of Westminster, and the magistrates of the vicinity, to put the laws in execution, do you think that would be successful?—As far as my judgment goes, if the whole were to join their efforts it would not succeed."

The beadles complain that when they take up beggars the magistrates discharge them. One of the beadles of St George's, Bloomsbury, said, "I took up a man yesterday that I observed knocking at every house, regularly, in Bloomsbury-square, two or three days ago. He was again yesterday taking every house regularly; I waited till the servant came to the door, and he then put a petition into her hand; I took the petition from him, and took him to the watch-house. I found three copies of the petition upon him. I took him to the office in Hatton Garden, and the magistrate discharged him.

"Did the magistrates examine you upon your oath?—They did; and I told them I had removed him out of Bloomsbury-square, three days before, in consequence of great complaints of the inhabitants, that those persons were suffered to be about.

"You stated upon your oath, to the magistrate, that you believed him to be a common vagrant?—Yes; he paused a quarter of an hour upon it; and he said, the prison was so full of people that he thought it not right to commit him there. He talked of sending him to the New Prison, and the clerk said it must be the House of Correction. I told him I should not object, if he thought proper to discharge him, which he did. The magistrate told me, if I saw him again, I might bring him. I could have taken four beggars up on Sunday, but if we take them down they discharge them.

"That is the practice of the magistrates?—It is. I have taken many and many down, and they have been discharged; and my brother beadles will give the same testimony."

Mr Mills, a gentleman who had been Overseer of the parish of St Giles, stated, "We used to take them to the magistrates, and take the recourse the law provided; but, in fact, the magistrates themselves would have loaded the prison, they were so numerous. In our parish there was no end to the commitments which would have taken place. I have sat with my brother officers from two o'clock in the afternoon till eight in the evening, constantly relieving those persons."

It thus, we think, sufficiently appears, that the law for the compulsive prevention of beggary cannot be executed, or, more accurately speaking, it is unfit for execution; it cannot be executed without Beggar. producing a much greater quantity of evil than it seeks to remedy; and therefore the magistrates take upon them, without scruple, to violate it, and leave it without execution.

Of the things to be done, one, then, most obviously suggested, is a review of the existing laws which relate to beggary; the repeal of all the enactments, which are ill adapted to the object in view; and the passing of other enactments which may possess the greatest practicable degree of adaptation and efficiency. Into the detail of these enactments, it is not here the intention to enter, because they must embrace the provision which is made for the destitute; the questions relating to which, we reserve for the article on the Poor.

Another of the remedial operations, unfortunately demanded, is to make provision immediately for the careful and efficient education of the whole mass of the population, down to the lowest individual. On the potent connection between good education, and that sort of conduct which keeps people above the level of mendicity, as well as on the mode in which education should be provided, our sentiments will be given with more propriety on another occasion.

As the tendency in population to increase faster than food, produces a greater number of individuals than can be fed,—as this is the grand parent of indigence, and the most prolific of all the sources of evil to the labouring portion of mankind, take all possible measures for preventing so rapid a multiplication; and let no mere prejudice, whether religious or political, restrain your hands in so beneficent and meritorious an undertaking. It would be easy to offer suggestions on this head, if we were not entirely precluded from going into detail. It is abundantly evident, in the meantime, that indirect methods can alone avail; the passions to be combated cannot be destroyed; nor, to the production of effects of any considerable magnitude, resisted. With a little ingenuity they may, however, be eluded, and, instead of spending themselves in hurtful, made to spend themselves in harmless channels. This it is the business of skilful legislation to effect.

In cutting off other causes, cut off Ireland; we do not mean literally; but what we mean is, that the mode of governing Ireland should be so reformed, as to make it able to send to England something better than a mass of beggars nearly equal to all her own.

Make a law to prohibit all modes of paying the people, which have an affinity with yielding to the cravings of a beggar.

Take all proper methods of rendering universal and preserving alive that exquisite moral sensibility, which is possessed by so great a portion of your population, and makes them willing to die of hunger rather than beg.

Provide a proper asylum for rearing to virtue the children of beggars; and let no person who begs be allowed, on any terms, to retain power over a single child; that, at any rate, you may prevent any portion of the young from being reared to beggary. This is an easy, obvious, and most important part of a good plan for lessening or extinguishing the evil of beggary.

Reform your criminal code; and cease to deal with offences in such a fashion, as to make the indigence of your people greater, and the virtues less, than they would otherwise be.

Under the head of improvement in the criminal law, it may be fittest to speak of that indispensible instrument for the cure of beggary,—a system of Reformatories, or houses in which bad habits may be eradicated and good acquired. On this point, some of the witnesses, whose testimony is entitled to the greatest respect, used a language unusually strong. The chaplain to Bridewell Hospital said, "I have long thought, seeing so much misery as I have done, that, as to remedy, very little could be done, unless you deprive the beggars of the pretext of begging; that that could be only by a large penitentiary system."

"Has it occurred to your mind, that there could be a Penitentiary large enough to include all those persons?—I have not proposed one for the whole town, but four or five at different parts of the town.

"Did you propose this for persons having settlements in the country, and others?—Yes; that every person knocking at the door might have admission, and that no person should have a pretext for begging in the streets. If a committee was sitting at either of those Penitentiaries, and work was going on at them, that would relieve from part of the expence; the great advantage that appears to my mind is, the investigation of each case. I do not know any place in town where that can be done. I have frequently thought, that unless there could be such a system as that to which I have alluded, the clearing of the town is hopeless: The great mass of misery which floats in this metropolis, I am fearful can never be removed, unless there is such a penitentiary system as that to which I have alluded: the two societies established for the reception of such persons are far too confined.

"If one, two, or three large ships could be fitted up with good accommodation, do you think such places could be substituted for penitentiary houses, till the parties were disposed of?—I never but once saw any thing of the kind, and that was at Sheerness some years ago, when I think the sailors' wives lived in two large hulks drawn up on shore; but there appeared to be so much misery and wretchedness, and they were so close and confined, that I did not form a favourable opinion of it.

"The question supposes the ships to be fitted up in an airy manner, with convenient apartments, that would receive nearly as many, at little or no expence to the public, as the Penitentiary House now building at a very great expence?—The penitentiary houses, as proposed by me, would include workshops and rope-walks, and so on."

Mr Colquhoun was asked,—"Do you think there could be any law devised by which there could be a possibility of furnishing relief to that class of persons who may be properly called beggars, by which they could be removed out of the streets?—I think it is perfectly possible to lessen the evil in a very considerable degree, but it must be by legislative regulation, and at pretty considerable expence. The situation of this town, to which so many wander up, is such that there must be an asylum for beggars, with a species of work-house, or what I would call a Village of Industry, that would apply to all. That struck me so strongly in the year 1792, that I wrote a paper on the subject; and I believe if the war had not broken out, it would have taken place. About 5000 are vomited out of the jails, without character; those people coming on society, it would have been a most desirable thing to have had an Asylum for them; but it was so gigantic a thing, that that prevented its being carried into effect. If such an Asylum could be established, I think in a very short time it would relieve the town of a great many of the beggars; but the magistrates must necessarily have some place to send them to.

"The Committee have been informed, that, within these few weeks, as is customary at this season of the year, there have entered London about 5000 persons of the labouring class, probably many of the mendicant class?—I cannot speak to the number; but I have no doubt of it.

"Would your plan of an Asylum go to the relieving those persons?—It would go to the relieving all persons who are mendicants, or had lost their character, by being committed for petty offences to the different prisons of the metropolis."

This, undoubtedly, is the right idea. Provide a system of Reformatories as perfect as they might easily be made, and you may accomplish every thing. Deprive yourselves of this important instrument, and you can do but little to any good purpose. A more appropriate place for describing this measure in detail, will occur more than once hereafter. We know, however, only one good plan, and that is before the world already, in Mr Bentham's Panopticon. Apply this, with the system of management which he has contrived for it, and if you do not extinguish the evil of pauperism, in all its degrees, you will undoubtedly reduce it to its lowest terms.

In the testimony given by the chaplain of Bridewell, as we have seen in the preceding quotation, he mentions, "the investigation of each particular case of beggary," as an advantage of the highest possible kind.

Mr Butterworth said,—"I conceive that no plan of relieving the poor is so effectual as that of visiting them at their own habitations; and even then, inquiry must be made of their neighbours, to know their real characters, as persons in the habit of begging are adepts in the art of imposition."

Mr Cooper was asked,—"In what way do you think poor families may be mostly benefited by the exercise of benevolence?—I know of no way more efficient than that of their being visited and relieved at their own habitations; and, in fact, as far as my observation and experience go, there is no certainty whatever of any donation being properly applied, without investigating the circumstances at their own habitations."

We deem these testimonies of great importance; as we are convinced, that what is here recommended, a distinct investigation of each individual case, rendered co-extensive with the population, would be attended with innumerable advantages.

To render this investigation practicable, without enormous trouble, and, indeed, to render it possible with any tolerable degree of exactness, another and a most important operation is required, subservient to an infinite number of good purposes; and that is, a proper system of registration. The whole country should be divided into sections, containing each a moderate number of inhabitants; the names, residences, and descriptions of the inhabitants of each section should be entered in a public record; and means employed (as much as could be without incurring any serious inconvenience of a different sort) for placing the people of each under the full inspection of one another. How important a check this would be on improper conduct of every sort is intuitively manifest. How easy, too, it would render the business of visitation, and what perfect knowledge it would afford of the circumstances of each individual case, it is impossible to overlook.

The importance of registration was not unknown to some of the witnesses before the Mendicity Committee. Sir N. Conant observed,—"In a town like this, where no creature knows the inhabitant of the next house hardly, or their character, and especially among the poor, the overseers of parishes ready enough at all times to spare if they can, by any kind of indulgence (I was going to say) the parish purse, are always willing to put at a distance every person who applies, being entirely ignorant either of their character or of their necessity. Until they are forced to take them in, and give them relief, they seldom do, unless they know them, and they know very few of the inhabitants even of their own parish, in the very nature of the thing; this applies to any condition of life, and more especially to the poor; that introduces another class of mendicants, which are people deserving of parochial relief, in the interval before they get it. If the paupers apply to-day to the parish officer, being settled in their parish, they are not known to him; and the parish officer either says, he shall make some inquiry; or, that they look strong and hearty, and able to maintain themselves, or that their families may be imposed upon them, and that he shall inquire and see, and they may work."

We find Benefit Clubs, and Savings Banks, held forth as means for the preventing of beggary. But we question, whether the sort of people who apply to savings banks and benefit clubs are apt to become beggars. We see, that those among the common people, who have had any moral feelings implanted in them, will in general die rather than beg. We see also, that the having a provision already made is no security against mendicity, when the mind is worthless; because many of the Greenwich and Chelsea pensioners beg, and are among the most troublesome of all beggars. It would surely not be difficult to find a better mode of paying these pensioners, so as to afford a check upon their vices. Some way might also be found of punishing those parishes, who, when a beggar is passed to them, instantly let him out again, to prey upon the public. When a beggar appears, if it is resolved to suppress them altogether; or when he acts in any such manner as to create a nuisance, if it is only proposed to suppress what is noisome about them; it should al- ways be easy at the moment for any passenger, or observer, to put in execution the means of taking them up. For this purpose, it would be necessary that a constable or beadle authorized for this purpose should be in every street, and his residence rendered conspicuous to all the passengers.

Under the head of remedies for the disease of beggary, it is necessary to speak of societies for the suppression of it. In the first place, it is abundantly evident, that an assemblage of private individuals have little power over the chief causes of mendicity; over wars, for example, excessive procreation, and bad legislation. They can only endeavour to counteract, by such powers as they possess, the operation of these causes. They may, indeed, contribute indirectly to the removal of the causes; namely, by holding them up in their true colours, to the legislature, and to the nation. This, it may be observed, in one of the ways in which they may effect the greatest quantity of good; may, in fact, advance with the greatest expedition to the accomplishment of their own end. With the means possessed in this country of operating upon the public mind, and the influence of the public mind upon the legislature, a society of gentlemen, rendered conspicuous by their union, and the beneficence of their proceedings, might, by representations, sufficiently persevering, and sufficiently strong, more especially if the operation was not confined to one society, but common to a number of societies, in numerous parts of the country; effect almost any improvement of which the nature of the case would admit.

The first idea of a Society of this sort, as far as we know, was started in Edinburgh, and there carried into execution in the year 1813. The sole object of this society appears to have been to try what they could do for the cure of beggary, under the existing laws. There is no evidence of their having elevated their views to the thought of operating through the public upon the legislature, and through the legislature upon the sources from which mendicity flows.

In the sphere which the Society of Edinburgh have chalked out for themselves, it is impossible for us not to bestow upon their proceedings the highest encomiums; since they have put in practice, as far as it lay within their power, the principles which we have here recommended as the groundwork of reform.

In the first place, the Visitation principle:—"The basis of the whole plan," says their Report, "was to be investigation, and personal inquiry."

Secondly, the Registration principle:—"For the sake of facilitating the task of making such inquiries," continues the Report, "and the labour of superintending the poor, as the only means of preventing fraud and imposture, it was necessary to divide the city into separate wards or districts." From the want of legislative powers, however, it is abundantly evident, that they could perform the work of registration very imperfectly; were obliged, in fact, to content themselves with the registration of those persons exclusively who applied to them for relief; and instead of placing them effectually under the superintendence of the district itself, to take the labour of superintendence wholly upon themselves. If the business of registration, thus imperfectly performed, is yet an important instrument, how much would that importance be increased, if it were performed completely by legislative regulation.

Thirdly, the Reformatory, or Employment principle: The society is divided into four committees, of one of whom the business is to find employment for those of the applicants who are able to labour. It is evident under what prodigious disadvantages they carry on this part of their beneficent work. To perform it with any degree of completeness, a great establishment, such as those which have been called penitentiaries, houses of industry, reformatories, or panopticons, is required; an establishment in which different species of work may be carried on with all the accommodations which belong to them; in which the parties may work under the most complete superintendence; and in which they may be as completely as possible exposed to the operation of all the salutary motives which can be brought to bear upon them.

Fourthly, the Education principle: The children of the beggars are clothed, and sent to a Lancastrian school; and so important is this part of the business of the society accounted, that one of the four committees is wholly employed in conducting it.

What the Society professes is, to provide subsistence for all those who really are deprived of it, and of the means of providing it for themselves; and upon the strength of this undertaking the police of the city prohibit begging, by imprisoning and removing the beggars.

The only question which applies to this expedient regards the power of the Society to accomplish all which they undertake. If they can make provision for all who really and truly are in want; to prohibit begging is then to prohibit imposture, and can produce nothing but good. And if, along with this, they are able to make the distinction completely between those who are and those who are not able to provide for themselves; and to draw the benefit of labour from all who are capable of it; as far as there is any evil in mere begging, beyond the evil of being reduced to the begging condition, which is the principal, it is removed. It is not absolutely impossible that such an expedient as that of the Edinburgh Society, at one particular place, and one particular time; namely, when taken up with extraordinary ardour, owing to some particular concurrence of circumstances,—as in Edinburgh at the era of a new System of Police; or to the ardour of one or more individuals of sufficient influence to set a fashion, may, to a considerable degree, succeed. But it is abundantly certain, that it is not calculated for general or permanent use. How could it be applied to London, for example?—Besides; a great national benefit can never rest with safety on any thing so precarious, as the chance of extraordinary virtue in particular men.