The Life of the Bee 



figures to move in the elaborate mechan- 

 isms we see in our village fairs. 



We might go lower still, and show, as 

 Ruskin has shown in his "Ethics of the 

 Dust," the character, habits, and artifices 

 of crystals ; their quarrels, and mode of 

 procedure, when a foreign body attempts 

 to oppose their plans, which are more 

 ancient by far than our imagination can 

 conceive ; the manner in which they ad- 

 mit or repel an enemy, the possible vic- 

 tory of the weaker over the stronger, as, 

 for instance, when the all-powerful quartz 

 submits to the humble and wily epidote, 

 and allows this last to conquer it ; the 

 struggle, terrible sometimes and some- 

 times magnificent, between the rock-crystal 

 and iron ; the regular, immaculate expan- 

 sion and uncompromising purity of one 

 hyaline block, which rejects whatever is 

 foul, and the sickly growth, the evident 

 immorality, of its brother, which admits 



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