Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen.
- John Hunter
- Date:
- 1840
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Observations on certain parts of the animal oeconomy. Inclusive of several papers from the Philosophical transactions, etc / by John Hunter ... With notes by Richard Owen. Source: Wellcome Collection.
429/494 page 421
![and were therefore intended to have a tolerably well-regulated warmth, without which, of course, they are very uncomfortable and soon die; and which makes not only a part of their internal ceconomy respecting the individual, but a part of their external or common ceconomy, and is therefore necessary to be known. The heat of bees is ascertainable by the thermometer, and I shall give you the result of experiments made at two different seasons of the year. - July 18th, at ten in the evening, wind northerly, thermometer at 54° in the open air, I introduced it into the top of a hive full of bees, and in less than five minutes it rose to 82°. [ let it stand all night; at five in the morning it was down at 79°; at nine in the same ’ morning it had risen to 88°, and at one o’clock to 84°; and at nine _in the evening it was down to 78°. December 20th, air at 35°, bees at 73°. Although bees support a heat nearly equal to that of a quadruped, yet their external covering is not different from that of insects which do not; there is no difference between their coat and common fly’s or wasp’s, nor are they fatter, all which makes them bad retainers of heat; therefore they are chilly, and in a cold too severe for them to be comfortable in, they make up for their want of size singly and get into clusters. A single bee has so little power of keeping itself warm, that it presently becomes numbed, and almost motionless: a common night in summer will produce this effect. A cold capable of producing such effects kills them soon, by which means vast num- bers die; therefore a common bee is obliged to feed and live in society to keep itself warm in cold weather. We know that the consumption of heat may be greater than the power of forming it; when that is the case we become sensible of it, and then take on such actions as are either instinctive, such as arise naturally out of the impression, or as reason, custom, or habit di- rect. Many animals upon the impression of cold, coil themselves up in their own fur, bringing all their extremities into the centre or Kollow of the belly; birds bring their feet under the belly, and thrust their bill between their wing and body; many if not all, go to the warmest places, either from instinctive principle or habit ; but the bees have no other mode but forming clusters, and the larger heat; that that power in the solitary insects is greatest in the diurnal species of flying insects, especially such as reside most constantly in the open air. The law that the mature or more perfect animal is ‘* more capable of generating heat than when it is younger” (see p. 159), is well exemplified by Mr. Newport in the class of insects. In the Lepidoptera, the average elevation of the temperature of the body above that of its’ surrounding medium is in the larve from 0°.9, to 19.5, while in the ‘imago it is from 5° to 10°. Among the Hymenoptera it is from 2° to 4° in the larva, and in the imago from 4° to 15°, or even 20°. In all these cases the amount of animal heat developed is in the ratio of the consumption of oxygen and the quantity of carbonic acid formed in the change of the arterial into serous blood ; or in other words, in proportion to the energy with which the functions of respiration and locomotion go on in the insect. ]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b33292292_0429.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
