LET NOTHING BE LOST. 227 



within that very limited period. Putting aside the 

 value of the wax, and only counting the honey at its 

 wholesale price, here is at least a guinea's worth of honey 

 made in two days by labourers who want no wages and 

 provide their own food. 



When Job, more than three thousand years ago, wrote 

 of " rivers and streaming brooks of honey," and of the 

 "sweet influences of the Pleiades," the starry belt of 

 Orion, the " twelve signs (Mazzaroth) and their seasons," 

 and " Arcturus with his sons," he could have formed no 

 idea of the intimate connection between the vastness of 

 the starry heavens and the tiny cell of the insect that 

 furnished him with " honey out of the rock." 



Nor, until the last few years, was the connection of the 

 bee with astronomy known, and then it was discovered 

 by an accident. As this is not a scientific treatise, I 

 cannot go into details, and will only give a very slight 

 account of this important discovery, 



It had long been known that the bee-cell possessed the 

 maximum of capacity with the minimum of material, and 

 the cells being placed in double tiers, it was also found 

 that their ends terminated in three diamond-shaped plates 

 uniting in a point which exactly coincided with the centre 

 of the opposite cell, so that each cell gave support to all 

 those surrounding it, and was supported by them in like 

 proportion. 



That the mystery of the cell lay in the angles of these 

 plates had been long suspected, and accordingly they were 

 carefully measured, the measurements proving identical, 

 no matter who was the observer. 



