DUBLIN NATUKAL HISTORY SOCIETV. 139 



3. A bee (also extinct) was grown, that built square cells in double 

 combs. This bee used only 41| units of wax. 



4. A bee (also extinct) was grown, forming hexagonal cells with flat 

 bottoms, in double combs. This bee used 33^ units of wax. 



5. The hive bee (now living side by side with his humble progeni- 

 tor) was produced by natural selection, dependent on the economy of 

 wax, arising from the contrivance of substituting for the flat bottoms of 

 the hexagonal cells the trihedral angles and planes of the rhombic do- 

 decahedron. 



This bee (our bee) uses 32| units of wax. 



6. The Bee of the Future (not yet produced), which shall have learned 

 how to construct the cell described by the mathematician Lluillier. 



This bee will be broader and shorter than the present, the breadth 

 and length admitting of prediction to any degree of approximation. 



This Bee of the Future will only require 24l units of wax ! ! — Fivat 

 Geometria ! 



Of these six species of bee (the first and the fifth are living), No. 5 

 using only 32| lbs. of wax in the construction of its cells for every 100 

 lbs. used by No. 1. According to the Malthusian law, No. 5 has exter- 

 minated No. 4, by virtue of the trifling advantage of |rds of a pound 

 of wax in every 100 lbs. ; and this slight advantage is gravely alleged 

 as the efficient cause of converting one species of bee into another ! This 

 would be all very well, if No. 1, the spendthrift humble bee, were not 

 still living, and holding his ground well against his enemies, to bear 

 witness against this silly theory. 



In fact, the whole question of the economy of wax, and other such 

 questions, require a thorough sifting. To my mind, it is evident that 

 economy of wax has nothing whatever to do with the making of the bee's 

 cells ; but that this and other properties, such as maximum resistance 

 to fluid pressure, &c., necessarily reside in the bee's cell, because they 

 are the inherent properties of the rhombic dodecahedron, which is the 

 form affected by that cell. The true cause of that shape is the crowding 

 together of the bees at work, jostling and elbowing each other, as was 

 first shown by Bufi'on. From this crowding together, they cannot help 

 making cells with the dihedral angles of 120° of the rhombic dodeca- 

 hedron ; and the economy of wax has nothing to do with the origin of 

 the cell, but is a geometrical property of the figure named. 



III. The most serious logical blunder committed by all who invent 

 a theory of life from the geological succession is, that Succession implies 

 Causation. It is agreed that the Palaeozoic cephalopoda produced, in 

 some way or other, the Eed Sandstone fishes ; that these in turn gave 

 birth to theLiassic reptiles ; that the non-placental mammals of the upper 

 Oolite grew after some fashion, and ultimately produced the Tertiary 

 mammals, some of which, in an unhappy hour, gave birth to man. The 

 only fact at the basis of this astonishing inverted cone of reasoning is 

 that these creatures did succeed each other in the manner described, and 

 from this it follows, post hoc ergo propter hoc, that they succeeded each 

 other in the way of cause and effect. I propose to test this strange theory 



