The Life of the Bee 



She starts her flight backwards ; returns 

 twice or thrice to the alighting-board ; and 

 then, having definitely fixed in her mind 

 the exact situation and aspect of the king- 

 dom she has never yet seen from without, 

 she departs like an arrow to the zenith of 

 the blue. She soars to a height, a lumi- 

 nous zone, that other bees attain at no 

 period of their life. Far away, caressing 

 their idleness in the midst of the flowers, 

 the males have beheld the apparition, 

 have breathed the magnetic perfume that 

 spreads from group to group till every 

 apiary near is instinct with it. Immedi- 

 ately crowds collect, and follow her into 

 the sea of gladness, whose limpid bounda- 

 ries ever recede. She, drunk with her 

 wings, obeying the magnificent law of the 

 race that chooses her lover, and enacts 

 that the strongest alone shall attain her in 

 the solitude of the ether, she rises still ; 

 and, for the first time in her life, the blue 



