582 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



to any mere change in the sensations of the bees ; and to what far-fetched 

 and gratuitous suppositions we must be reduced, if we adopt any such 

 explanation. We can but refer it to an instinct of which we know 

 nothing ; and so referring it, can we help exclaiming with Huber, " Such 

 is the grandeur of the views, and of the means of ordaining wisdom, that 

 it is not by a minute exactness that she marches to her end, but proceeds 

 from irregularity to irregularity, compensating one by another : the admea- 

 surements are made on high, the apparent errors appreciated by a divine 

 geometry; and order often results from partial diversity. This is not the 

 first instance which science has presented to us of preordained irregu- 

 larities which astonish our ignorance, and are the admiration of the most 

 enlightened minds. So true it is that the more we investigate the general 

 as well as particular laws of this vast system, the more perfection does it 

 present."^ 



It is observed by M. P. Huber, in his appendix to the account of his 

 father's discoveries relative to the architecture of bees, that in general the 

 form of the prisms or tubes of the cells is more essential than that of their 

 bottoms, since the tetrahedral-bottomed transition cells, and even those 

 cells which being built immediately upon wood or glass were entirely with- 

 out bottoms, still preserved their usual shape of hexagonal prisms. But 

 a remarkable experiment of the elder Huber shows that bees can alter 

 even the form of their cells when circumstances require it, and that in a 

 way which one would not have expected. 



Having placed in front of a comb which the bees were constructing a 

 slip of glass, they seemed immediately aware that it would be very diffi- 

 cult to attach it to so slippery a surface ; and instead of continuing the 

 comb in a straight line, they bent it at a right angle, so as to extend 

 beyond the slip of glass, and ultimately fixed it to an adjoining part of 

 the wood-work of the hive which the glass did not cover. This devia- 

 tion, if the comb had been a mere simple and uniform mass of wax, 

 would have evinced no small ingenuity ; but you will bear in mind that 

 a comb consists on each side, or face, of cells having between them bot- 

 toms in common ; and if you take a comb, and, having softened the wax 

 by heat, endeavor to bend it in any part at a right angle, you will then 

 comprehend the difficulties which our little architects had to encounter. 

 The resources of their instinct, however, were adequate to the emergency. 

 They made the cells on the convex side of the bent part of the comb 

 much larger, and those on the concave side much smaller than usual ; the 

 former having three or four times the diameter of the latter. But this 

 was not all. As the bottoms of the small and large cells were as usual 

 common to both, the cells were not regular prisms, but the small ones 

 considerably wider at the bottom than at the top, and conversely in the 

 large ones 1 What conception can we form of so wonderful a flexibility 

 of instinct ? How, as Huber asks, can we comprehend the mode in 

 which such a crowd of laborers, occupied at the same time on the edge 

 of the comb, could agree to give to it the same curvature from one extre- 

 mity to the other ; or how they could arrange together to construct on 

 one face cells so small, while on the other they imparted to them such 



> Huber, ii. 230. 



