256 M. FABRE'S EXPERIMENTS. 



had brought the usual complement of honey, she laid 

 her egg, and gravely sealed up the empty cell. In 

 another case, he made a large hole in the cell just above 

 the level of the honey — a hole so large that through it 

 he was able to see the bee lay her egg. Having done so, 

 she carefully closed the top of the cell, but though she 

 closely examined the hole in the side, it did not enter 

 into the range of her ideas that such an accident could 

 take place, and it never occurred to her to cover it up. 



Another curious point raised by these ingenious 

 experiments has reference to the quantity of hone}^ 

 The cell is by no means filled ; a space is always left 

 between the honey and the roof of the cell. The usual 

 depth of the honey in a completed cell is ten milli- 

 metres. But the bee is not guided by this measure- 

 ment, for in the preceding cases she sometimes closed 

 the cell when the honey had a depth of only five milli- 

 metres, of three, or even when the cell was almost empty. 

 No ; in some mysterious manner the bee feels when she 

 has provided as much honey as her ancestress had done 

 before her, and regards her work as accomplished. 

 What a wonderful, but what a narrow, nature ! She 

 has built the cell and provided the honey, bat there 

 her instinct stops : if the cell is pierced, if the honey is 

 removed, it does not occur to her to repair the one or 

 fill up the other. M. Fabre not unnaturally asks, 

 " Avec la moindre lueur rationnelle, I'insecte deposerait- 

 il son oeuf sur le tiers, sur le dixieme des vivres neces- 

 saires ; le deposerait-il dans une cellule vide ; laisserait- 

 il le nourrisson sans nourriture, incroyable aberration de 

 la maternite? J'ai raconte, que le lecteur decide." 



The family of bees is generally reckoned to be one 

 of great intelligence, but these and many other similar 



