132 REPORT—1858. 
Carr Lag is not now easy to identify, but the author thinks it was this Long-billed 
Goose, a bird that resided and bred in the Carrs along with the Grey Lag, and like 
that bird is no longer to be found in these districts, and is now one of our scarcest 
British birds, or almost a lost species. This bird is distinguished from the Bean 
Goose by its long bill, and its entirely different habits. 
The following is a list of the species :— 
Anas albifrons, White-fronted Goose.—Face white, bill flesh-coloured (Gould, 
No. 349) ; an occasional winter visitor in this country in small groups. 
Anas ferus, or Anser, Grey Lag Wild Goose.—Breeds sparingly in this country, 
and is not a migratory species. Bill pink, nail white. 
Anas Segetum, Bean Goose, Short billed or Migratory Goose.— Bill short, strong, 
the depth at the base being nearly two-thirds that of the length, pale red in the 
middle, black at the extremities, but varies much in the proportions of these colours. 
Old birds as large and pale coloured as a Grey Lag Goose. Pink-footed Goose, 
smaller bird, less and darker; the young of the last. 
Anas paludosus, Carr Lag, or Long-billed Goose.—Bill long and weak, being 
exactly twice the length of the depth at the base, being 2? in. long and 13 in. deep 
at the base. Bill strongly toothed, a groove running the length of the lower man- 
dible; colour same as last. Gould, plate 348, but not the description: not a mi- 
gratory species. 
On the Formation of the Cells of Bees. By W. B. TEGETMEIER. 
Having recently been engaged in making a series of experiments with a view to 
determine the typical form of the cells of bees, and having arrived at some interest- 
ing results, I am desirous of bringing them before the members of the British Asso- 
ciation. My first experiment consisted in placing a flat parallel-sided block of wax 
in a hive containing a recent swarm. In this, cells were excavated by the bees at 
irregular distances. In every case where the excavation was isolated it was hemt- 
spherical, and the wax excavated was added at the margin so as to constitute a: 
cylindrical cell. As other excavations were made in contact with those previously 
formed, the cells became flat-sided, but from the irregularity of their arrangement 
not necessarily hexagonal. When the block was coloured with vermilion, the em- 
ployment of the excavated wax in the formation of the sides of the cells was rendered 
more evident. The experiment has been repeated with various modifications as to 
the size and form of the block of wax, but always with the same results,—namely, 
that the excavations were in all cases hemispherical,—that the wax excavated was 
always used to raise the walls of the cells, and that the cells themselves, before 
others were formed in contact with them, were always cylindrical. Mr. Charles 
Darwin, to whom I communicated these facts, has repeated the experiments with 
similar results. When these experiments are taken into consideration, in connexion 
with the facts that in the commencement of a comb the rudiments of the first-formed 
cells are always hemispherical, and that in a small extending comb the outer sides 
of the bases of the external cells are always circular, they appear to lead to the con- 
clusion, that the typical form of a single cell is cylindrical, with a hemispherical base ; 
but that, when the cells are raised up in contact with one another, they necessarily 
become polygonal, and if regularly built, hexagonal. On this supposition alone can 
those numerous cases be accounted for in which one side of a cell is cylindrical, the 
other polygonal. In all such cases it will be found that, in the cell adjacent to the 
cylindrical side, there is not room (owing to some irregularity of the comb) for a 
bee to work,—consequently the cylindrical development is not interfered with. The 
formation of the small cylindrical cells surrounding the queen cell appear to admit 
of no other explanation. The mode in which the circular bases, situated at the thin 
edge of a comb in the process of enlargement, become converted into polygonal cells 
as new bases are formed on their outer sides, has been beautifully shown by Mr. 
Darwin. In repeating, with many ingenious modifications, my original experiments, 
he coloured, with vermilion and wax, the circular edges of the bases of the external 
cells in a small comb. On replacing this in the hive, he found that the walls of the 
cells were not raised directly upon these circular bases, but that, as other cells were 
built external to them, the coloured wax was remasticated and worked up into the 
