The Life of the Bee 



figures to move in the elaborate mechan- 

 isms we see in our village fairs. 



We might go lower still, and show, as 

 Ruskin has shown in his " Ethics of the 

 Dust," the character, habits, and artifices 

 of crystals ; their quarrels, and mode of 

 procedure, when a foreign body attempts 

 to oppose their plans, which are more 

 ancient by far than our imagination can 

 conceive ; the manner in which they ad- 

 mit or repel an enemy, the possible vic- 

 tory of the weaker over the stronger, as, 

 for instance, when the all-powerful quartz 

 submits to the humble and wily epidote, 

 and allows this last to conquer it ; the 

 struggle, terrible sometimes and some- 

 times magnificent, between the rock-crystal 

 and iron ; the regular, immaculate expan- 

 sion and uncompromising purity of one 

 hyaline block, which rejects whatever is 

 foul, and the sickly growth, the evident 

 immorality, of its brother, which admits 

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