The workers in July and August commence an indiscriminate attack upon the drones, chasing them into the bottom and corners of the hive, killing them with their stings, and casting out the dead bodies. This destruction extends even to the eggs and larva of males. The workers are females, in which the generative organs are not developed. They are divided into nurses and wax workers; the former are the smallest and the weakest, ill adapted for carrying burdens, and their business is to collect the honey, feed and take care of the grubs, complete the cells commenced by the others, and to keep the hive clean; the others provision the hive, collect honey, secrete and prepare wax, construct the cells, defend the hive from attack, attend to the wants of the queen, and carry on all the hostilities of the community.

On the loss of the queen the hive is thrown into the greatest confusion. The food of bees consists principally of the honeyed fluids and the pollen of flowers. The formation of wax is the office of the wax workers. The quantity of wax secreted depends on the consumption of honey.

When a hive becomes too crowded preparations are made for the emigration of a swarm with a queen; scouts are sent out in advance to select a proper place for the new hive, and the workers collect an extra quantity of provisions to be carried with them. During the preparations a great buzzing is heard, which ceases on the day of departure. When all is ready, the signal is given by the workers, and the queen, with all the departing swarm, rushes to the door and rises into the air. They follow the queen, alighting with her in a dense cluster, and returning to the hive if she does. After a rest at their first landing place the swarm collects into a close phalanx and flies in a direct line to the selected spot. Two or three swarms will be sent off in a summer from an old hive.

CHAPTER XXI.

CURIOSITIES OF THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM.

Living Seed in the Earth-The Tap-Root-Plants that Perspire-Catching Water from Trees-Garden Sun-Flower-An Old Physician Living in a Pair of ScalesVegetable Marvel-The Weeping Tree-Plant with a Movable Lid-Water Treasured in Plants in the Burning Desert-Leaves that Flash Lightning-The Famous Cow-Tree-Vegetable Milk-Butter Tree-Poisonous Compounds"Herculean Remedy" -India Rubber Tree-Golden Wealth for the World— Vegetable Giants-Astonishing Magnitudes-Eighteen Guests Taking Supper in a Hollow Tree-Enormous Lime-Tree-Normandy Oak Turned ir a Church-Riding on Horseback Through Tree-Cavities-Colossal BaɔbabStrange Burial Place-Gigantic Cedars of California-Tops Five Hundred Feet in the Air-Giving a Ball on a Stump--Vegetable Longevity-Methuselahs of the Forest-Historic Lime at Fribourg-Old Age of the Fir-Army of Cortez under one Tree-Legends of Teneriffe-Dragon's-Blood Tree-Where we get Camphor-"Serpents of the Vegetable Kingdom"-Deadly Nettles-The Fatal Upas-Astounding Stories-Antidotes to Poison-Medicinal Treasures-Famous Tartarian Lamb-Part Plant and Part Animal-Wonderful Rafflesia-Plants without Leaves Borrowing those of their Neighbors-Picturesque Scene in the Tropics-Giant Ferns-Mangrove Tree--Sea of Fire-Seeds Sprouting in Human Noses and Stomachs-Marvelous Enginery-Balloon Puff-Ball.

C

JOMMIT a seed to the earth; plant, for example, a haricot bean at the depth of two inches in moist vegetable soil, and if the temperature is right the seed will not be slow to germinate, first swelling, and then bursting its outer skin. By this admirable arrangement, of which nature permits us to contemplate the wonderful results, but without as yet enabling us to comprehend the strange mystery, a plant in miniature, eventually the counterpart of its parent, will, after a time, reveal itself to the observer. In the meantime, two parts, very distinct, make their appearance: one, yellowish in color, usually branched, sinks into the soil-this is the root; the other, of a pale, greenish color, takes the opposite direction, ascends to the surface, and rises above the ground-this is the stem.

The design of the Creator of the world seems to have been to embellish and make beautiful all which was to be exposed to our eyes, while that which was to be hidden was left destitute of grace or beauty. Leaves suspended from their branches balance themselves gracefully with every movement of the air; the stems, branches, and flowers are the ornament of the landscape, and satisfy the eye with their beauty;

but the root is without colors or brilliancy, and is usually of a dull uniform brown, yet performs in obscurity functions as important as those of stem, branches, leaves, or flowers. Yet how vast the difference between the verdant top of a tree, which rises graceful and elegant into mid airnot to speak of the flowers it bears-and the coarse mass of its roots, divided into tortuous branches without harmony, without symmetry, and forming a tangled, disordered mass! These organs, so little favored in their appearance, have, however, very important functions in the order of vegetable action.

All plants which germinate with two seed leaves have, at first, a single descending root, the tap-root. From this central tap-root, lateral roots branch out more or less regularly, and these lateral roots subdivide again and again. In many cases, especially at first, the lateral roots issue from the tap-root with great order and regularity, as much as in the arrangement of the branches of a young fir-tree; in older plants this order is lost. The tap-root is conspicuous in the dock and in seedling fruit-trees; its upper portion in many cultivated plants, such as the beet and carrot, expands under cultivation, and becomes abnormally fleshy.

But all roots are not planted in the soil. There are some plants which develop roots in water, as the duckweed which never touches the earth. Others nourish themselves on the tissues of other plants, as the mistletoe, a singular parasitic plant, which forms tufts or branches of a delicate pale green, attaching itself to apple-trees, poplars, and a number of other trees. Some roots appear, moreover, to have no other function than to fix the plants to the soil; they seem to contribute nothing to their nourishment.

Living on Air.

In the Museum of Natural History of Paris there has been for some years a magnificent Peruvian cactus, of an extraordinary height, which has been growing vigorously, throwing out enormous branches with great rapidity. Its roots are shut up in a box three feet square, filled with earth, which has never been renewed and never watered. It is therefore evident that in this case the roots have little to do with the nourishment of the plant. Other instances confirm these inferences. "In a country where many months pass without a drop of rain falling," says Hilaire, "I have seen, during the dry season, cactuses covered with flowers, maintaining themselves on the burning rocks by the aid of a few weak slender roots, which sink into the dried-up humus which has found its way into the narrow clefts of the rock." Nevertheless, most plants are nourished, to a large extent, through their roots.

Vegetable physiology approaches very nearly that of animals. Like them plants exhale moisture abundantly by their whole surface. It is this which, condensed upon the leaves by the cold of night, forms on them limpid little drops of water, which the vulgar incorrectly ascribe to a deposit of atmospheric moisture.

The idea that plants transpire like animals is due to Muschenbroeck, one of the professors who have contributed most to rendering the university of Leyden illustrious. For this purpose he covered with a plate of lead the whole circumference of the root of a white poppy, so as to prevent the vapor of the earth from interfering with his experiment. The plant was then covered with a bell-glass cemented to the lead. After that each morning when the naturalist came to visit the imprisoned plant he observed, that even during the driest nights its leaves were covered with an innumerable quantity of those drops of water to which the name of dew is given, and that the sides of the glass themselves were quite obscured with it. It is not then from the air that the dew of the meadow and the leaf comes, but, as the Dutch naturalist learned, from the sweating of the plant; dew is only their perspiration condensed.

Plants that Rain.

This fact being thoroughly established, it only remained to decide the amount which vegetable transpiration produces. Mariotte tried a very elementary experiment on this head. Having cut off a branch and covered the section with impermeable cement, he observed that the leaves, while withering, had lost two tea-spoonfuls of water in two hours, at a time when the air was tolerably warm. The naturalist therefore concluded that in twelve hours the branch would lose a dozen tea-spoonfuls.

But such an estimate was far from being exact. Guettard managed better; he conceived the idea of not separating the branch from the plant, but of enclosing it in a globe of glass, terminating outwardly in a neck which was inserted into a flask. When all was hermetically sealed, the moisture transpired, condensing itself little by little on the sides of the globe, fell drop by drop into the bottle situated beneath it, and could be. collected without the slightest loss, so that nature was left to herself.

When on a burning summer day, exhausted and streaming with perspiration, we see in the by-nook of a parterre the garden sun-flower, we admire its heavy floral crown turned towards the luminary which it ceaselessly accompanies in its course, and its ample and motionless leaves; but this apparent calm vails a most unexpected vital energy.

Who indeed would think that the perspiration exhaled by the leaves of the plant is more copious than that which moistens our foreheads? Yet