WAX. 61 



other. At length she leaves her work, and is lost in 

 the crowd of her companions. Another succeeds and 

 resumes the employment, then a third. All follow 

 the same plan of placing their little masses, and if 

 any one, by chance, gives them a contrary direction, 

 another coming removes them to their proper place. 



" The result of all these operations is a mass or 

 little wall of wax, with uneven surfaces, five or six 

 lines (twelfths of an inch) long, two lines high, and 

 half a line thick, which descends perpendicularly. In 

 this first work is no angle nor any trace of the figure 

 of the cells. It is a simple partition in a right line 

 without any inflection. 



" The wax-makers having thus laid a foundation 

 of a comb, are succeeded by the nurse-bees [here 

 Huber is wrong 1 ], which are alone competent to 

 model and perfect the work. The former are the 

 labourers, who convey the stone and mortar ; the 

 latter the masons, who work them up into the form 

 which the intended structure requires. One of these 

 bees now places itself horizontally on the vault (or 

 bar-frame) of the hive, its head corresponding to the 

 centre of the mass or wall which the wax-makers 

 have left, and which is to form the partition of the 

 comb into two opposite assemblages of cells ; and 

 with its mandibles (jaws), rapidly moving its head, it 

 moulds in that side of the wall a cavity which is to 

 form the base of one of the cells, to the diameter of 

 which it is equal. When it has worked some minutes 

 it departs, and another takes its place, deepening the 

 cavity, heightening its lateral margins by heaping up 

 the wax to right and left, by means of its teeth and 



1 See remark immediately preceding the quotation. 



