478 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



these large cells, as if well aware of their being occupied 

 by a different race of inhabitants ". 



On some occasions bees, in consequence of Huber's 

 arrangements in the interior of their habitations, have 

 begun to build a comb nearer to the adjoining one than 

 the usual interval ; but they soon appeared to perceive 

 their error, and corrected it by giving to the comb a 

 gi-adual curvature, so as to resume the ordinary di- 

 stanced 



In another instance, in which various irregularities 

 had taken place in the form of the combs, the bees, in 

 prolonging one of them, had, contrary to their usual 

 custom, begun two separate and distant continuations, 

 which in approaching instead of joining would have in- 

 terfered with each other, had not the bees, apparently 

 foreseeing the difficulty, gradually bent their edges so as 

 to make them join with such exactness that they could 

 afterwards continue them conjointly*^. 



In constructing their combs, bees, as you have been 

 before told, in my letter on the habitations of insects, 

 form the first range of cells — that by which the comb 

 is attached to the top of the hive — of a different shape 

 from the rest. Each cell instead of being hexagonal is 

 pentagonal, having the fifth broadest side fixed to the 

 top of the hive, whence the comb is much more securely 

 cemented to that part, than if the first range of cells had 

 been of the ordinary construction. For some time after 

 their fabrication, the combs remain ui this state ; but at 

 a certain period the bees attack the first range of cells 

 as if in fury, gnaw away the sides without touching the 

 ' Huber, i. 233. ^ Ibid. ii. 239. '^ Ibid. ii. 240. 



