276 THE BEE NATION. 



like those, have slowly and gradually struggled up the toil- 

 some road of progressive development. Even now there are 

 some species of ants ignorant of the highly developed 

 division of labor in the civilised ant States, and which bear 

 the same relation to these as the rude aborigines of Australia 

 and Africa do to the civilised and cultured nations of to- 

 day." 



In this connexion the observations made by Bates (loc. cit., 

 Vol. ii., p. 44) on the American bees, or Meliponce, are very 

 noteworthy. It seems, he says, that none of the American 

 bees have reached that high stage of architectural ability in 

 the formation of their combs which is seen in the European 

 honey bee. The wax cells of the Melipona are generally 

 long and only show an approach to the hexagonal form 

 where many of them come into contact. This certainly 

 vshows plainly enough how the purely mechanical force of 

 pressure and narrow space must gradually cause the originally 

 spherical cells to change into cornered, and especially six- 

 cornered ones. For the hexagon is exactly that geometrical 

 form in which it is the most natural for little bodies, not laid 

 above each other in rows with mathematical accuracy, to 

 unite without gaps and interspaces. Therefore such bodies, 

 as a matter of fact, when they are soft, vesicular or yielding, 

 flatten themselves into hexagons of their own accord in a 

 given narrowed space. For instance, if enough water is 

 poured into a bottle filled with peas to make the peas swell, 

 and they are not able to get out of each others way, on 

 emptying them out hexagonal and not spherical bodies will 

 be found. We have the same appearance if we blow air into 

 soap-suds. All the rising bubbles are pressed together in 

 more or less six-sided forms, whereas bubbles set free in the 

 air are perfectly round. Also the originally spherical cells 

 of which our own body is composed assume the hexagonal 

 form wherever they are closely pressed together, as in mucous 

 membranes, cancerous tumors, etc. Now let us imagine two 

 flat layers of equal- sized thimble-shaped cells, like those, 

 for instance, built by the Melipona scutellaris (compare the 

 picture of p. 464 in Blanchard's work), so placed one above 

 the other that the openings of either layer point outwards, 

 and that the closed ends touch each other, so that each 

 convex surface of the one side fits into the concavity made 

 by the ends of three contiguous cells of the other, and 



