The Life of the Bee 



there can possibly be, the reason only 

 can lie in the absence of a judge superior 

 to ourselves. But it is well that argu- 

 ment should make way for fact ; and 

 indeed, to the objection based on an 

 experiment, the best reply of all must 

 be a counter-experiment. 



In order to satisfy myself that hexag- 

 onal architecture truly was written in the 

 spirit of the bee, I cut off and removed 

 one day a disc of the size of a five- 

 franc piece from the centre of a comb, 

 at a spot where there were both brood- 

 cells and cells full of honey. I cut into 

 the circumference of this disc, at the 

 intersecting point of the pyramidal cells ; 

 inserted a piece of tin on the base of one 

 of these sections, shaped exactly to its 

 dimensions, and possessed of resistance 

 sufficient to prevent the bees from bend- 

 ing or twisting it. Then I replaced the 

 slice of comb, duly furnished with its 



