( 105 ) 



CHAPTER VI. 



ARCHITECTURE OF THE BEE-HIVE CONTINUED FORM OF 



THE CELLS. 



The obstruction of which M. Huber complains only ope- 

 rated as a stimulus to his ingenuity in contriving how he 

 might continue his interestiug observations. From the 

 time of Pappus to the present day, mathematicians have 

 applied the principles of geometry to explain the construc- 

 tion of the cells of a bee -hive ; but though their extra- 

 ordinary regularity, and wonderfully-selected form, had so 

 often been investigated by men of the greatest talent, and 

 skilled in all the refinements of science, the process by which 

 they are constructed, involving also the causes of their 

 regularity of form, had not been traced, till ]\I. Huber 

 devoted himself to the inquiry. 



As the wax-workers secrete only a limited quantity of 

 wax, it is indispensably requisite that as little as possible 

 of it should be consumed, and that none of it should be 

 wasted. Bees, therefore, as M. Eeaumur well remarks,* 

 have to solve this difficult geometrical problem : — a quan- 

 tity of wax being given, to form of it similar and equal 

 cells of a determinate capacity, but of the largest size in 

 proportion to the quantity of matter employed, and dis- 

 posed in such a manner as to occupy the least possible 

 space in the hive. This problem is solved by bees in all 

 its conditions. The cylindrical form would seem to be 

 best adapted to the shape of the insect ; but had the cells 

 been cylindrical, they could not have been applied to each 

 other without leaving a vacant and superfluous space between 

 every three contiguous cells. Had the cells, on the other 

 hand, been square or triangular, they might have been con- 

 * Reaumin, vol. v. p. 380. 



