The Swarm 



orders; she obeys, as meekly as the 

 humblest of her subjects, the masked 

 power, sovereignly wise, that for the 

 present, and till we attempt to locate it, 

 we will term the " spirit of the hive." 

 But she is the unique organ of love ; she 

 is the mother of the city. She founded 

 it amid uncertainty and poverty. She 

 has peopled it with her own substance; 

 and all who move within its walls — 

 workers, males, larvae, nymphs, arid the 

 young princesses whose approaching birth 

 will hasten her own departure, one of 

 them being already designed as her suc- 

 cessor by the "spirit of the hive" — 

 all these have issued from her flanks. 



[lO] 



"What is this " spirit ■ of the hive" — 



where does it reside? It is not like the 



special instinct that teaches the bird to 



construct its well planned nest, and then 



39 



