BLENDED ORIGIN, OR PLASTICITY OF INSTINCT. 205 



cluster at the top of the hive, and do not engage in labours of 

 this kind 



" Having placed in front of a comb which the bees were 

 constructing a slip of glass, they seemed immediately aware 

 that it would be very difficult to attach it to so slippery a 

 surface, and, instead of continuing the comb in a straight 

 line, they bent it at a right angle, so as to extend beyond the 

 slip of glass, and ultimately fixed it to an adjoining part of 

 the woodwork of the hive which the glass did not cover. 

 This deviation, if the comb had been a mere simple and 

 uniform mass of wax, would have evinced no small ingenuity ; 

 but you will bear in mind that a comb consists on each side 

 or face of cells having between them bottoms in common ; 

 and if you take a comb, and, having softened the wax by 

 heat, endeavour to bend it in any part at a right angle, you 

 will then comprehend the difficulties wliich our little archi- 

 tects had to encounter. The resources of their instinct, 

 however, were adequate to the emergency. They made the 

 cells on the convex side of the bent part of the comb much 

 la.rger, and those on the concave much smcdler than usual ; 

 the former having three or four times the diameter of the 

 latter. But this was not all. As the bottom of the small 

 and large cells were as usual common to both, the cells were 

 not regular prisms, but the smaller ones considerably wider at 

 the bottom than at the top, and conversely in the larger 

 ones ! What conception can we form of so wonderful a 

 flexibility of instinct ? How, as Huber asks, can we com- 

 prehend the mode in which such a crowd of labourers, 

 occupied at the same time on the edge of a comb, could agree 

 to give it the same curvature from one extremity to the other ; 

 or how they could arrange together to construct on one face 

 cells so small, while on the other they imparted to them 

 such enlarged dimensions ? And how can we feel adequate 

 astonishment that they should have the art of making cells 

 of such different sizes correspond ? " * 



Other observations of Huber show that even under ordi- 

 nary circumstances bees are frequently in the habit of 

 altering the construction of their cells. Thus, for instance, 

 the cells which are destined to receive drones requiring to be 

 considerably larger than those which are destined to receive 

 neuters, and the rows of all the cells being continuous, where 



* Kii'bj and Spence, loc. cit., pp. 485-495. 



