70 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



stant replacement of old particles by new ones, and this 

 change is not, after all, a mere substitution, but also includes 

 and carries with it a process of growth and increase. Of this 

 latter process, as seen in the living being, perhaps the most 

 wonderful feature is that whereby, amid all the constant 

 change which the acts of living and being involve, the 

 animal or plant should preserve and retain the impress in 

 which it was, so to speak, originally limned. 



A study of the denizens of a stagnant pool may thus be 

 shown to lead up, unconsciously it may be, but also naturally, 

 to some matters of weighty consideration and interest, even 

 to the most unscientific of observers. And it will be found 

 not the least characteristic and valuable feature of all such 

 studies, that they serve as literal starting-points and as van- 

 tage-grounds, whence we may shape an intellectual course, 

 leading us by many and diverse radii from limited percep- 

 tions and finite aims, outwards and upwards to the Infinite 

 itself. 



[The following interesting communication with reference to the bee's 

 cell appeared in the Times, in reference to an address by Mr. G. J. 

 Romanes, at the British Association Meeting, 1878, on " Animal Intelli- 

 gence." The writer, Mr. Lacy (Rector of Allhallows, London Wall), 

 very clearly shows that the conditions under which the bee's cell is 

 formed are simply of a mechanical nature, and do not in any sense de- 

 pend on powers allied to those of consciousness or will. 



" In your excellent article on Mr. Romanes's lecture on animal in- 

 telligence at the British Association, you allude to the case of the bee's 

 cell, and say, in reference to the mathematical properties of the hexagon, 

 ' we must either admit that every bee solves a difficult mathematical 

 problem or else that this problem has been solved for all bees in the 

 construction of their nervous centres.' Either of these admissions im- 

 plies that the bee itself makes its cell in a hexagonal form. There is, 

 however, a simpler explanation. The hexagonal form is, quite indepen- 

 dently of the bee itself, the necessary mechanical result of the mode in 

 which the bees work, and the cell could not by possibility be in any 

 other form. 



" The case is this : The instinct of the bee is to make a cell in a 

 cylindrical form by the circular motion of its head, just as a silkworm 

 makes its cocoon, or a burrowing animal its hole. This is shown by the 

 outer cells of every honeycomb, which are always semi-cylindrical where 



