The Life of the Bee 

 into many details that will have but slen- 

 der interest for the reader, whose eyes 

 perhaps may never have followed a flight 

 of bees ; or who may have regarded them 

 only with the passing interest with which 

 we are all of us apt to regard the flower, 

 the bird or the precious stone, asking of 

 these no more than a slight superficial 

 assurance, and forgetting that the most 

 trivial secret of the non-human object we 

 behold in nature connects more closely 

 perhaps with the profound enigma of our 

 origin and our end, than the secret of 

 those of our passions that we study the 

 most eagerly and the most passionately. 



[60] 



And I will pass over too — in my de- 

 sire that this essay shall not become too 

 didactic — the remarkable instinct that in- 

 duces the bees at times to thin and demol- 

 ish the extremity of their combs, when 



207 



