VII] OF THE BEE'S CELL 541 



We had better be content to say that it depends on the same 

 elementary geometry. 



The question is, To what particular force are we to ascribe the 

 plane surfaces and definite angles which define the sides of the cell 

 in all these cases, and the ends of the cell in cases where one row 

 meets and opposes another? We have seen that Bartholin sug- 

 gested, and it is still commonly beheved, that this result is due to 

 mere physical pressure, each bee enlarging as much as it can the 

 cell which it is a-building-, and nudging its wall outwards till it fills 

 every intervening gap, and presses hard against the similar efforts 

 of its neighbour in the cell next door*. 



That the bee, if left to itself, "works in segments of circles," or 

 in other words builds a rounded and roughly spherical cell, is ah 

 old contention! which some recent experiments of M. Victor 

 Willem amplify and confirm {. M. Willem describes vividly how 

 each cell begins as a Httle hemispherical basin or "cuvette," how 

 the workers proceed at first with Httle apparent order and method, 

 laying on the wax roughly like the mud when a swallow builds; 

 how presently they concentrate their toil, each burying its head in 

 its own cuvette, and slowly scraping, smoothing and ramming 

 home; how those on the other side gradually adjust themselves 



* Darwin had a somewhat similar idea, though he allowed more play to the 

 bee's instinct or conscious intention. Thus, when he noticed certain half- completed 

 cell-walls to be concave on one side and convex on the other, but to become perfectly 

 flat when restored for a short time to the hive, he says: "It was absolutely im- 

 possible, from the extreme thinness of the little plate, that they could have effected 

 this by gnawing away the convex side; and I suspect that the bees in such cases 

 stand on opposite sides and push and bend the ductile and warm wax (which as 

 I have tried is easily done) into its proper intermediate plane, and thus flatten it." 

 Ruber thought the difference in form between the inner and the outer cells a clear 

 proof of intelhgence; it is really a direct proof of the contrary. And while cells 

 differ when their situations and circumstances differ, yet over great stretches of 

 comb extreme uniformity, unbroken by any sign of individual differences, is the 

 strikingly mechanical characteristic of the cells. 



I It is so stated in the Penny Cyclopedia, 1835, Art. "Bees"; and is expounded 

 by Mr G. H. Waterhouse [Trans. Entom. Soc, London, ii, p. 115, 1864) in an 

 article of which Darwin made good use. Waterhouse shewed that when the 

 bees were given a plate of wax, the separate excavations they made therein 

 remained hemispherical, or were built up into cylindrical tubes; but cells in 

 juxtaposition with one another had their party-walls flattened, and their forms 

 more or less prismatic. 



X V^ictor Willem, L'architecture des abeilles, Bull. Acad. Roy. de Belgique (5), 

 XIV, pp. 672-705, 1928. 



