ON THE FORM OF BEES' CELLS*. 



MARALDI seems to have been the jifsl person who determined 

 the form of the rhombs of the pyramidal ending of the bee's 

 cell : his observations on bees were published in the Memoirs of 

 the French Academy for 1712. They are very good and clear": 

 one ambiguous expression, however, has given rise to a miscon- 

 ception which is still current and is repeated by every writer, or 

 nearly so, on the subject. Maraldi states that the angles of the 

 rhomb are 110 and 70, and that the angles of the trapeziums 

 which form the sides of the body of the cell, are also 110 and 70 

 I mean, of course, the angles next the apex of the cell, those at 

 the open extremity of the tube are right angles ; the point to be 

 observed is this, Maraldi when he gives the results of his mea- 

 surements makes no attempt to do more than state the value of 

 the angles to the nearest degree, an amount of accuracy beyond 

 which it is scarcely possible, under the circumstances, to go, and 

 which is amply sufficient, considering the irregularities which un- 

 doubtedly exist in the structure of individual cells ; but a little 

 further on in his paper, he remarks, that as the angles of the 

 rhombs are equal to those of the trapeziums, they must be respec* 

 tively 109 28 V and 70 32\ Thus, he remarks, the angles chosen 

 by the bees have this advantage which conduces to the elegance and 

 symmetry of the structure, namely, that only two angles are used 

 throughout. He does not state how he is led to this conclusion, 

 but an attentive reader will see that after having asserted that 

 the result of measurement was 110 degrees, Maraldi did not pro- 

 ceed in the next page to contradict himself by asserting that the 

 result of his measurements was 109 28\ There can be no ques- 

 tion but that, being struck by the equality (so far as his measure- 

 ments could ascertain it) of the angles in the rhombs and in the 

 trapeziums, he assumed that in the normal or typical cell, this 



* Now first published. 



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