178 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



such berries a greater chance in the struggle for exis 

 tence. 



With profound analytic and synthetic skill, Mr. 

 Darwin investigates the cell-making instinct of the 

 hive-bee. His method of dealing with it is represen- 

 tative. He falls back from the more perfectly to the 

 less perfectly developed instinct from the hive-bee to 

 the humble bee, which uses its own cocoon as a comb, 

 and to classes of bees of intermediate skill, endeavour- 

 ing to show how the passage might be gradually made 

 from the lowest to the highest. The saving of wax is 

 the most important point in the economy of bees. 

 Twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar are said to be 

 needed for the secretion of a single pound of wax. The 

 quantities of nectar necessary for the wax must therefore 

 be vast; and every improvement of constructive instinct 

 which results in the saving of wax is a direct profit to 

 the insect's life. The time that would otherwise be 

 devoted to the making of wax, is devoted to the 

 gathering and storing of honey for winter food. Mr. 

 Darwin passes from the humb.le bee with its rude cells, 

 through the Melipona with its more artistic cells, to 

 the hive-bee with its astonishing architecture. The 

 bees place themselves at equal distances apart upon the 

 wax, sweep and excavate equal spheres round the 

 selected points. The spheres intersect, and the planes 

 of intersection are built up with thin laminae. Hexa- 

 gonal cells are thus formed. This mode of treating 

 such questions is, as I have said, representative. The 

 expositor habitually retires from the more perfect and 

 complex, to the less perfect and simple, and carries you 

 with him through stages of perfecting adds increment 

 to increment of infinitesimal change, and in this way 

 gradually breaks down your reluctance to admit that 

 the exquisite climax of the whole could be a result of 

 natural selection. 



