A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY 157 



faculty of speech, hitherto held up as man's insignia 

 of lordship over the rest of creation, may be 

 indeed a cmde, archaic thing, compared with the 

 mind-language of the honey-bees. 



There is another conceivable function which the 

 antennae of bees may perform — that of unerring 

 and instant estimation of short distances. They 

 may be delicate measuring instruments, not 

 mechanically applied in the way of a foot-rule or 

 metric scale, but registering dimensions inherently, 

 as our ears record intensity of sound. This would 

 go far to explain how honeycomb is built, how 

 the cells are made all of the same shape and size, 

 although hundreds of the mason-bees are at 

 work on the structure, not only at the same 

 moment, but in succession, each bee coming and 

 going in the murmurous gloom of the hive, and 

 beginning instantly and unhesitatingly at the point 

 where her predecessor broke off. As the central 

 division of the comb grew, expanding in all direc- 

 tions downward, and the cells were built out 

 horizontally at the same time, the bee would know 

 by her sense of dimension when the limit of each 

 side in the hexagonal cell-base was reached, and 

 would know the proper angle to turn off at in the 

 laying of the next foundation-line. 



Anyone who has watched the flight of the bee 

 must have been struck by its sheer facility and 

 freedom no less than by its speed. It is quite 

 evident that the bee is not only an accomplished 



