NATURAL HISTORY. 25 



out, and it shows the wonderful wisdom of 

 God in teaching this poor bee how to contrive 

 the matter. The egg which is put in the 

 lowest cell being the oldest, the little worm 

 that is afterward to be a bee will come out 

 of that one first : now, you know, he never 

 could get through all the cells over his head, 

 filled as they are with bee-bread, so as to come 

 out at the top of the hole. If he gets out at 

 all, then, it must be at the bottom. The old 

 bee knows this, and she so arranges these 

 eggs that when the worm comes out it will be 

 with his head pointed downwards ; he falls to 

 eating his bread, and so eats himself down to 

 the bottom of his cell, and there he finds that 

 his mother has bored a hole from his cell to 

 the outside, and through that he comes out. 

 When his brother in the cell above him has 

 eaten his way down to the bottom of his cell, 

 he just eats through the floor and gets into 

 the cell below, which is then empty, you 

 know, and walks out at the same hole which 

 his older brother used before him. And so all 

 the rest one after another eat their way down- 

 wards into the empty cells below them, and 

 get out at the same back-door, which their 



mother made by what we call her instinct, 



c 



