232 LIFE AND HABIT. 



How, again, can it be supposed that they transmit 

 these organs to the future neuter members of the com- 

 munity when they are perfectly sterile ? 



One can understand that the young neuter bee might 

 be taught to make a hexagonal cell (though I have 

 not found that any one has seen the lesson being given) 

 inasmuch as it does not make the cell till after birth, 

 and till after it has seen other neuter bees who might 

 tell it much in, qua us, a very little time ; but we can 

 hardly understand its growing a proboscis before it could 

 possibly want it, or preparing a cavity in its thigh, to 

 have it ready to put wax into, when none of its pre- 

 decessors had ever done so, by supposing oral com- 

 munication, during the larvahood. Nevertheless, it 

 must not be forgotten that bees seem to know secrets 

 about reproduction, which utterly baffle ourselves; for 

 example, the queen bee appears to know how to 

 deposit male or female eggs at will ; and this is a 

 matter of almost inconceivable sociological import- 

 ance, denoting a corresponding amount of sociological 

 and physiological knowledge generally. It should 

 not, then, surprise us if the race should possess other 

 secrets, whose working we are unable to follow, or even 

 detect at all. 



Sydney Smith, indeed, writes : — 



" The warmest admirers of honey, and the greatest 

 friends to bees, will never, I presume, contend that the 

 young swarm, who begin making honey three or four 

 months after they are born, and immediately construct 

 these mathematical cells, should have gained their 

 geometrical knowledge as we gain ours, and in three 



