70 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



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quired being such as theory and observation " nearly agree " in 

 giving to the cells, Lord Brougham replies: "The 'nearly' is quite 

 incorrect : there is an absolute and perfect agreement between theory 

 and observation." * 



Mathematicians appear to be of one accord in this ; viz. if economy 

 of space and wax is sought, that the form of the cell should be the one 

 alleged to have been ascertained by Maraldi, and which was really cal- 

 culated by Koenig, and by hundreds of others since his time. Careful 

 observations, however, tend to prove that such a cell is rarely, perhaps 

 never, realized. For, while the deviations from the true form do not 

 exceed a certain limit, a piece of comb, ten cells square, can hardly be 

 found in which one or more irregularities do not occur, of such magni- 

 tude, that, however they may look to the bee's eye, can be readily de- 

 tected by man's. The best observers, such as Reaumer, Hunter, the 

 Hubers, and others, have noticed some of these, but as their investiga- 

 tions had for their chief object the clearing up of other points relating 

 to the habits of the bee, the irregularities of the cells were passed by, 

 for the most part, with merely a mention. 



Worker Cells. — These will be treated of first, because they are the 

 most numerous. The drones of a hive only amount at the most to a 

 few hundreds, while the workers are estimated at many thousands, and 

 the number of cells is proportional to the number of young reared. 

 All the varieties found in the worker are repeated in the drone and 

 honey cells, though in the last-mentioned kind the variations are the 

 most marked, and some are introduced which are not found in either of 

 the others. 



The average diameter of a worker cell, measured on a line perpen- 

 dicular to its sides, as deduced from the following table, is 0.201, or 

 one fifth of an inch, but it may be increased or diminished in different 

 parts of the same comb.f Reaumer expresses his belief that this was 

 the case, but he gives no measurements. The table given below is the 

 result of the examination of four pieces of comb, which were in all re- 



* Op. cit., p. 350. 



t Reaumer found that twenty worker cells measured four inches less half of a 

 line ; " neglecting the half of a line, the diameter of a single cell would ^e 2.4 lines " 

 (French) ; and Huber gives the same dimensions, as also Kirby and Spence, who 

 quote their description of everything relating to the bee from Reaumer and Huber. 

 Latrei lie found that 76 millimeters comprised 14 cells, when measured in one di- 

 rection, and 14.5 in another. 



