486 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



comb on this plan, if their object were not to revert to 

 tlie pyramidal form with which they set out. — In building 

 the male cells, the bees begin their foundation with a 

 block or mass of wax thicker and higher than that em- 

 ployed for the cells of workers, without which it would 

 be impracticable for them to preserve the same order 

 and symmetry in working on a larger scale. 



Irregularities (to use the language of Huber, from 

 whom the above details are abstracted,) have often been 

 observed in the cells of bees. Reaumur, Bonnet and 

 other naturalists cite them as so many examples of im- 

 perfections. What would have been their astonishment 

 if they had been aware that part of these anomalies are 

 calculated ; that there exists as it were a moveable har- 

 mony in the mechanism by which the cells are composed ! 

 If, in consequence of the imperfection of their organs or 

 of their instruments, bees occasionally constructed some 

 of their cells unequal, or of parts badly put together, it 

 would still manifest some talent to be able to repair these 

 defects, and to compensate one irregularity by another : 

 but it is far more astonishing that they know how to quit 

 their ordinary routine when circumstances require that 

 they should build male cells; that they should be in- 

 structed to vary the dimensions and the shape of each 

 piece so as to return to a regular order ; and that, after 

 having constructed thirty or forty ranges of male cells, 

 they again leave the regular order on which these were 

 formed, and arrive by successive diminutions at the point 

 from which they set out. How should these insects be 

 able to extricate themselves from such a difficulty — from 

 such a complicated structure? how pass from the little 

 to the great, from a regular plan to an irregular ojie, 



