208 SPECIAL INSTINCTS. [CHAP. VIII. 



they deepened these little pits, they made them wider and wider 

 until they were converted into shallow basins, appearing to the 

 eye perfectly true or parts of a sphere, and of about the diameter 

 of a cell. It was most interesting to observe that, wherever 

 several bees had begun to excavate these basins near together, 

 they had begun their work at such a distance from each other, 

 that by the time the basins had acquired the above-stated width 

 (i.e. about the width of an ordinary cell), and were in depth about 

 one sixth of the diameter of the sphere of which they formed a 

 part, the rims of the basins intersected or broke into each other. 

 As soon as this occurred, the bees ceased to excavate, and began 

 to build up flat walls of wax on the lines of intersection between 

 the basins, so that each hexagonal prism was built upon the 

 scalloped edge of a smooth basin, instead of on the straight edges 

 of a three-sided pyramid as in the case of ordinary cells. 



I then put into the hive, instead of a thick, rectangular piece of 

 wax, a thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, colou^d with vermilion. 

 The bees instantly began on both sides to excavate little basins 

 near to each other, in the same way as before ; but the ridge of 

 wax was so thin, that the bottoms of the basins, if they had been 

 excavated to the same depth as in the former experiment, would 

 have broken into each other from the opposite sides. The bees, 

 however, did not suffer this to happen, and they stopped their 

 excavations in due time ; so that the basins, as soon as they had 

 been a little deepened, came to have flat bases; and these flat 

 bases, formed by thin little plates of the vermilion wax left 

 ungnawed, were situated, as far as the eye could judge, exactly 

 along the planes of imaginary intersection between the basins on 

 the opposite sides of the ridge of wax. In some parts, only small 

 portions, in other parts, large portions of a rhombic plate were 

 thus left between the opposed basins, but the work, from the 

 unnatural state of things, had not been neatly performed. The 

 bees must have worked at very nearly the same rate in circularly 

 gnawing away and deepening the basins on both sides of the ridge 

 of vermilion wax, in order to have thus succeeded in leaving flat 

 plates between the basins, by stopping work at the planes or 

 intersection. 



Considering how flexible thin wax is, I do not see that there is 

 any difficulty in the bees, whilst at work on the two sides of a 

 strip of wax, perceiving when they have gnawed the wax away to 

 the proper thinness, and then stopping their work. In ordinary 

 combs it has appeared to me that the bees do not always succeed 

 in working at exactly the same rate from the opposite sides ; for 

 I have noticed half-completed rhombs at the base of a just 

 commenced cell, which were slightly concave on one side, where 

 I suppose that the bees had excavated too quickly, and convex on 



