The Foundation of the City 



And one fine day the industry or 

 caprice of man will install a docile swarm 

 in one of these disconcerting abodes. And 

 there the little insect is expected to learn 

 its bearings, to find its way, to establish 

 its home ; to modify the seemingly un- 

 changeable plans dictated by the nature 

 of things. In this unfamiliar place it 

 is required to determine the site of the 

 winter storehouses, that must not extend 

 beyond the zone of heat that issues from 

 the half-numbed inhabitants ; it must 

 divine the exact point where the brood- 

 cells shall concentrate, under penalty of 

 disaster should these be too high or too 

 low, too near to or far from the door. 

 The swarm, it may be, has just left 

 the trunk of a fallen tree, containing 

 one long, narrow, depressed, horizon- 

 tal gallery ; and it finds itself now 

 in a tower-shaped edifice, whose roof is 

 lost in gloom. Or, to take a case that 



