288 ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



advantageous to our humble-bees, if they were to make their 

 cells more and more regular, nearer together, and aggre- 

 gated into a mass, like the cells of the Melipona; for in this 

 case a large part of the bounding surface of each cell would 

 serve to bound the adjoining cells, and much labour and wax 

 would be saved. Again, from the same cause, it would be 

 advantageous to the Melipona, if she were to make her cells 

 closer together, and more regular in every way than at pres- 

 ent; for then, as we have seen, the spherical surfaces would 

 wholly disappear and be replaced by plane surfaces; and 

 the Melipona would make a comb as perfect as that of the 

 hive-bee. Beyond this stage of perfection in architecture, 

 natural selection could not lead; for the comb of the hive- 

 bee, as far as we can see, is absolutely perfect in economis- 

 ing labour and wax. 



Thus, as I believe, the most wonderful of all known in- 

 stincts, that of the hive-bee, can be explained by natural 

 selection having taken advantage of numerous, successive, 

 slight modifications of simpler instincts; natural selection 

 having, by slow degrees, more and more perfectly led the 

 bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each 

 other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax 

 along the planes of intersection ; the bees, of course, no more 

 knowing that they swept their spheres at one particular dis- 

 tance from each other, than they know what are the several 

 angles of the hexagonal prisms and of the basal rhombic 

 plates ; the motive power of the process of natural selection 

 having been the construction of cells of due strength and of 

 the proper size and shape for the larvae, this being effected 

 with the greatest possible economy of labour and wax; that 

 individual swarm which thus made the best cells with least 

 labour, and least waste of honey in the secretion of wax, 

 having succeeded best, and having transmitted their newly 

 acquired economical instincts to new swarms, which in their 

 turn will have had the best chance of succeeding in the 

 struggle for existence. 



