OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : JANUARY - 9, 1866. 69 



The mineralogist, treating the cell as a crystalline form, would not ex- 

 pect a closer approximation to exact measurement than that just stated. 



Lord Brougham, who, of later writers, has written the most elaborate- 

 ly on the subject, in his essay entitled Observations, Demonstrations, 

 and Experiments upon the Structure of the Cells of Bees, after having 

 himself solved Reaumer's problem, after having obtained solutions 

 of it through others, and after having himself measured the cells, 

 asserts positively that they are constructed in accordance with the form 

 deduced from calculation, and are therefore exact. Having compared 

 the sides of the cell by measurement with a micrometer, he says, " I 

 certainly can find no inequality." * Again, " She [the bee] works so 

 that the rhomboidal plate may have one particular diameter and no 

 other, always the same length, and that its four angles may be always 

 the same " ; f and he still further adds, " The construction of the cell, 

 then, is demonstrated to be such that no other which could be con- 

 ceived would take so little material and labor to afford the same 

 room. " I 



We have looked carefully through Lord Brougham's essay, for a 

 recognition of the existence of irregularities in the cells, but have 

 found none, except of such as are of microscopic size. " The lines, " 

 he says, " may not be exactly even which the bee forms ; the surfaces 

 may have inequalities to 4he bee's eye, though to our sight they 

 seem plane ; and the angles, instead of being pointed, may be blunt or 

 roundish, but the proportions are the same : the equality of the sides 

 is maintained, and the angles are of the same size, that is, the inclina- 

 tion of the planes is just Now, then, the bee places a plane in 



such a position, whatever be the roughness of the surface, that its in- 

 clination to another plane is the true one required. " § 



Lord Brougham's answer to L'Houillier's criticisms may be cited 

 to the . same effect. When the latter speaks of the conditions re- 



Maraldi's measurements with theory could only arise from his assuming that the 

 angle of inclination of the rhomboidal plane was the same with that of the hexagon, 

 viz. 120°, from which, no doubt, it would follow that the angles of the rhombuses 

 should be 109° 28' and 70° 32' respectively." — Lord Brougham, Nat. Theol., 

 p. 351. 



* Natural Theology, London, 1856, p. 224. 



t Ibid., p. 197. 



J Ibid., p. 324. 



§ Ibid., p. 191. 



