484 Transactions. — Zoology. 



tongue of the bee, which laps up the honey, ahnost exceeds, 

 according to Suammerdam and Gosse, the utmost efforts of 

 human knowledge. 



Now, hold a piece of comb up to the light, or break off a 

 piece. It will be observed that the cells forming each side of 

 the comb-wall — the two layers — do not start from the same 

 base. The hexagon is not continued straight through the 

 wall, but is broken in the centre, forming the basal rhombic 

 plate. This I take to be the most marvellous work of con- 

 struction in the comb ; for here the bees know exactly how to 

 break the joint, for the special purpose, I suppose, of giving 

 strength to the comb-walj and to the two opposite cells. 



There is no " blind sweeping of equal spheres at stated dis- 

 tances" in this breaking of the joint, for the bees know exactly 

 how to place and plane the basal plates and angles out of the 

 wax so as to perform this most delicate and wonderful principle 

 of construction. Therefore, whatever the guiding principle of 

 construction in nature may be which controls such a work, 

 the principle of natural selection is not within a thousand 

 miles of it. We can admit, for the sake of argument, that 

 there may be a principle of natural selection— I do not for 

 one moment say there is — between the simple cocoons of the 

 humble-bee and the cells of the hive-bee, of which the cell of 

 the Mexican MelijMna domestica is the intermediate stage. 

 This is what we are asked to admit. Pierre Huber, however, 

 who has carefully described and figured the cell of Melipona 

 domestica, calls it a " gross imitation" of the three-sided pyra- 

 midal base of the cell of the hive-bee. Darwin ignored these 

 words completely, and made use of Huber's name as a sup- 

 port for his theory. But what has this very short series of 

 natural-selection stages — (so very short a one, with so few 

 examples, and these so very uncertain, that I am completely 

 surprised Darwin did not himself candidly admit his w^ant of 

 proof, in place of taking it for granted that w^e should accept 

 his theory as a matter of course : he, moreover, drawing in the 

 name of Professor Nyman to support his assumption by the 

 statement that " the accuracy of the workmanship of the bee 

 has been greatly exaggerated ") — what even has this short 

 series to do with breaking the joint at the base of each cell ? 

 Surely the bases might have been equal in the layers for the 

 starting of the sides of each rhombus ! But they are not so, 

 and the bees know that they are not to be so, just as surely as 

 the horse-bot knows that the safest place to deposit its eggs 

 is just beneath the horse's chin. Evolutionists will, of course, 

 say that the horse-bot has been naturally selected to do this. 

 I propose to expose the fallacy of such an argument later on. 



It is not necessary for me to go into tlie actual details of 

 the cell-making, the gathering of the honey and the secretion 



