A STUDY OF LOWER LIFE. 71 



there has been no pressure from the inside. If a bee, therefore, worked 

 alone, its cell would be cylindrical. Another instinct of bees, however, 

 is to swarm and crowd together in everything they do. They thus work 

 at their cells side by side, and every bee as it works away at its cylinder- 

 is surrounded by as many others as can get close to it That number is 

 exactly six, neither more nor less. Any one may ascertain this for him- 

 self by placing a coin on a table, and then putting round it as many 

 similar coins as he can. He will find that six such coins will exactly 

 touch each other, and each exactly touch the central one. This is the 

 geometrical law which produces the hexagonal form of the cell. Each 

 bee is pressed upon by six others (excepting, of course, the extreme out- 

 side ones), and thus the interstitial curves of the cylinders get squeezed 

 out as they are made, become straight lines by the mutual pressures, 

 and every cylinder necessarily becomes a hexagon as its ultimate form. 



" The same cause produces the peculiar prismatic form at the bottom 

 of each cell. The instinct of the bees is not only to cluster together 

 side by side, but also to work at their cells in a double plane, head to 

 head. Each bee, therefore, as it works its head round from a hemi- 

 spherical end to its cell has six other heads pushing round it in the oppo- 

 site direction, trying to do the same thing. The necessary result is the 

 prismatic form we see. 



" The formation of the hexagonal cell is thus as entirely mechanical 

 as when a horse tethered to a peg describes a mathematical circle by 

 being put into a gallop. He is trying all the time not to describe a 

 circle, but to go off in a straight line ; but the restraining cord, tight- 

 ened by his efforts, becomes a radius, and a circle is the necessary result. 



" In both cases alike, the effect is entirely geometrical, and the will 

 of the animal has nothing whatever to do with it. "] 



