CHATS ON SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 4, Issue 365, 20 January 1880, Page 2

CHATS ON SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY.

Children, did you ever stop to consider the immense power posssessed by a bumble-bee? An insect weighing no more than the eighth of an ounce is capable of "raising " a man weighing 220 pounds from a bench in the public park, and then having lots of liftingmaterial left. Just stop and think of it f The stinger of a bee is not near as large as the finest needle, but such is the force behind it that it can be driven through heavy pants-cloth backed by merino drawers, and into the flesh about sixteen feet. If a man could wield a crowbar in comparison, he could drive it through seven saw-mills and a whisky distillery at one blow. Nature could not give the bee teeth and claws without spoiling its beauty, and to compensate she gave him this stinger as a weapon of attack and defence. If the bee had no weapon, ants, beetles, and bugs would cuff him around as they pleased, but, as it is, he is boss of the walk, and won't take a word from any of them.

The bumble-bee is not naturally of a quarrelsome disposition, but he can't be sat down on over half an hour without feeling as if some one was doing him a great wrong. If left to himself he will crawl up your coat-sleeve, look around, and crawl down and go ab6ut his business; but if welcomed with a blow between the eyes he is going to be revenged if it breaks a leg. He invariably closes bis eyes when he stings, and you have only to look a bee square in the face to discover when he is fooling around and vyhen he means fourteen per cent, per annum.

; The hay-field is a favorite resort of the bumble-bee, but you can find him almost anywhere, else if. you try hard. Having no pair of long hind legs, he cannot build his nest in a marsh, like and having no beak in which to carry straws, he cjannot nest in a tree like a bird. He therefore takes to the gruss, and under the roots of an old stump, or amidst a, pile of old rails, he rears 'his gentle young, and gives them printed instructions as to the difference between stinging six-inch stovepipes and runaway boys. The knowledge of old bees is .wonderful. They know where the school-house is. They know when school is out. They can sail miles away from home, get in their work on a farmer's son weeding out corn, and return home without -missing a fence corner or in need of an afternoon nap. As a rule they are early risers. Barefooted boys driving up the cows at daylight will find the bumble-bee out of bed and quite ready to begin the arduous labors of the day. Along ajbout sundown he quits work, counts noses to see if the family are all in, and then stows himself away for a,night of calm, and peaceful repose. The legs of a bumble-bee are very crooked. This seems to bad at first, sight

but you will soon discover that Nature was level-headed. His legs were thus shaped to enable him to hang to the brim of a boy's straw hat. Were his legs straight he could not walk a fence rail in a high wind, nor could he turn round after reaching the top of a mullein stock. The stripes on a bee look like a waste of material, but such is not the case. They furnish an extra covering, cover hie ribs to keep the frosty air off, and they serve to stiffen his spinal column in his flights through the air.

A bumble bee can fly at the rate of twenty miles an hour, if he wants fto, but there is no cause for him to fly any faster than a boy can run. He sometimes lives to be three years old, and is sometimes stricken down before he has travelled at all. Hie life is a precarious one. He may run a deacon out of a hayfield to-day, and be the big bee of the nest, and to-morrow a country school ma'am may knock bis head off with her umbrella. Nothing in natural history weighs mere for Ms size than the bee, and nothing in science works easier without cog-wheels or rubber rollers than than his stinger. It is always ready, never out of repair, and satisfaction (to the bee) is guaranteed in every case.— Detroit Free Press. i