The Life of the Bee 



sufficient; the first are mere hypotheses 

 that cannot be verified, the others do no 

 more than transplant the mystery. And 

 useful as it may be to transplant mystery 

 as often as we possibly can, it were not 

 wise to imagine that a mystery has 

 ceased to be because we have shifted its 

 home. 



[61] 



Now let us leave these dreary building 

 grounds, this geometrical desert of cells. 

 The combs have been started, and are 

 becoming habitable. Though it be here 

 the infinitely little that, without apparent 

 hope, adds itself to the infinitely little ; 

 though our eye with its limited vision 

 look and see nothing, the work of wax, 

 halting neither by day nor by night, will 

 advance with incredible quickness. The 

 impatient queen already has more than 

 once paced the stockades that gleam white 



