The Life of the Bee 



gether without any order ; and, at the 

 point between the spheres where these 

 might have intersected and induced a 

 profitable economy of space and material, 

 the meliponae clumsily insert a section of 

 cells with flat walls. Indeed, to compare 

 one of their nests with the mathematical 

 cities of our own honey-flies, is like 

 imagining a hamlet composed of primitive 

 huts side by side with a modern town ; 

 whose ruthless regularity is the logical, 

 though perhaps somewhat charmless, re- 

 sult of the genius of man, that to-day, 

 more fiercely than ever before, seeks to 

 conquer space, matter, and time. 



[57] 



There is a theory, originally pro- 

 pounded by Buffon and now revived, 

 which assumes that the bees have not the 

 least intention of constructing hexagons 

 with a pyramidal base, but that their 

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