The Progress of the Race 



the help thus offered by a magnificent 

 providence. Yet that is, more or less, 

 what the bees are doing in our modern 

 hives. 1 



I have said that even the policy of the 

 bees is probably subject to change. This 

 point is the obscurest of all, and the most 

 difficult to verify. I shall not dwell on 

 their various methods of treating the 

 queens, or the laws as to swarming that 

 are peculiar to the inhabitants of every 

 hive, and apparently transmitted from 

 generation to generation, etc. ; but by 

 the side of these facts which are not suffi- 



1 As we are now concerned with the construction of 

 the bee, we may note, in passing, a strange peculiarity 

 of the Apis Florea. Certain walls of its cells for males 

 are cylindrical instead of hexagonal. Apparently she 

 has not yet succeeded in passing from one form to thft 

 other, and indefinitely adopting the better. 



379 



