1 62 Traces of Unity in the 



extinct, for there is reason to believe that this place 

 may be taken, without any opposition on the part of the 

 workers, by any stray unfertilized queen who happens 

 to find her way into the hive. 



While doing the work which has been mentioned 

 the workers have also other work to do which is scarcely 

 less important. They have to keep a constant guard 

 at the entrance of the hive to prevent the admission 

 of wasps, or hornets, or ants, or moths, or other 

 enemies, and sometimes, in addition, they have to bar 

 the way by certain waxen fortifications which have to 

 be removed when the time for swarming comes ; they 

 have, when the air is close, to arrange themselves along 

 the passages in various places, and ventilate the hive by 

 keeping up a fanning action in a certain direction with 

 their wings ; they have no easy matter after the 

 massacre of the drones to remove dead bodies from 

 the hive, and to act generally as scavengers, and even 

 then they have not done their work. Indeed, the story 

 of the construction of the comb, upon which so much 

 has been said at different times, is almost the least 

 wonderful part of the work done by the sterile female 

 bees or workers ; and all that tan be said of this story 

 is that it is full of romance from the beginning to the 

 end. 



In each of these cases, and in very many other cases 

 like them, it is evident that the manifestations of life of 

 an instinctive character are beyond the skill and will of 

 the individual, but it is not so evident that the explana- 

 tion is to be found in unconscious cerebration or any other 

 mode of automatism. Very probably each individual is 

 a piece of perfect mechanism arranged to go on in the 

 same manner under the same circumstances ; and it is 

 quite supposable that individuals of the same sort are 



