[192]Cuvier says that the three kinds of cells are absolutely necessary, and that they do not depend on the greater or less abundance. The king of the ancients is what we know as the queen bee.
[193]They do not work, but are the males of the hive.
[194]The queen has a sting, like the working bees, but uses it less frequently.
[195]The true version is, that after killing the insect they bury it with their eggs as food for their future young.
[196]Cuvier says that some have been known nearly a foot long, but not more.
[197]Julius Obsequens speaks of a pestilence there, created by the dead bodies of the locusts, which caused the death of 8000 persons.
[198]It is in reality their larvæ that they thus bring out to dry. The working ants, or neutrals, are the ones on which these labors devolve; the males and females are winged, the working ants are without wings.
[199]By this is probably meant the Canis corsac, the small fox of India, by some mistake represented by travellers as an ant.
[200]This vase of Semiramis was her drinking bowl, in much the same sense that the great cannon at Dover was Queen Elizabeth’s “pocket pistol.”
[201]The specific gravity of lead is 11.352, and of silver only 10.474.