58 THE CAUSES WHICH PllOPAGATE 



deposited some pollen and honey beside it. In all this the bee 

 can be but the humble instrument of Providence, exhibiting 

 the instinct o£ its tribe ; for can we suppose she is knowingly 

 providing, or has a distinct vision of posthumous larvse ? So, 

 too, in regard to the more complicated phenomena of hexagonal 

 cell-building. This, Edward Newman, for instance, informs us, 

 is nothing more than takes place chemically in hexagonal crystals 

 and basaltic columns, and its popularity in the case of bees is 

 due to the interest imparted by imaginative and florid writers. 

 The views entertained by Dr. Darwin are similar. Those of 

 the bee kind, he notices in one of his works, which labour 

 solitary, as the species of Bombus, form cells of an ordinary 

 cocoon shape ; while those which work in company in a con- 

 fined space find their oval structures must become hexagons 

 by the law of equal pressure. Mr. G. R. Waterhouse says, 

 " Supposing a wax block were excavated in one of its sides 

 into the greatest number of equal- sized cylinders that it would 

 admit of, it would then follow that each cylinder would be 

 surrounded by six others, this being the only number of equal- 

 sized circles which may be placed round one of the same mag- 

 nitude ; and by removing the wax from the interstices, each 

 of these cylinders would become hexagons. Again, supposing 

 this block to be a flat mass, the ordinary thickness of a comb, 

 this block being cut into cylinders of equal diameters on both 

 sides, and the back of each cylinder being exactly over parts 

 of three opposing ones, when the wax is cut away at the 

 interstices, as at the sides, it follows that the bottoms of the 

 cells will be composed of three equal rhomb-shaped pieces. 

 This lesson Nature appears to have taught the Hive Bees. 

 The economy of White Ants differs from that of ants, in that 

 their larvae are the workers, and there is but one male and 

 female in each nest, the latter of whom is infiated with 

 innumerable eggs.^^ 



Of females sitting on their ovae and protecting the young, 

 Kirby and Spence mention three instances : the common Earwig, 

 a Van Diemen's Land Saw-fly, the June Birch Bug, and to 

 these some authors would add the Mole Crickets. With regard 

 to these examples appertaining to the Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, 

 and Hemiptera, we have accounts which, if unvarnished and 



