EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY 89 
that ever lived among sanitary scientists ever hope 
to achieve, if he were given the task of keeping in 
cleanly condition, perfect ventilation, and even 
temperature, a building where 10,000 individuals 
were crowded together storey above storey—a 
building hermetically sealed throughout except 
for one small opening at the lowest level, which 
must serve for all. purposes of entrance and exit 
to its denizens, as well as sole conduit for the 
removal of the foul air and introduction of the 
pure? The task would be gargantuan enough in 
the summer-time, when a large proportion of the 
inhabitants were away at work during a greater 
part of the day; but in winter, when all were 
continuously at home for weeks together, what 
conceivable device, or combination of devices, 
could prevent the building soon developing into 
first a quagmire and then a charnel-house, to which 
the Black Hole of Calcutta would be a model 
Sanitary retreat ? | 
Yet the difference between such a building and 
a beehive is only one of degree. The same con- 
ditions are involved, and the same evils must be 
combated. Relatively, the problem is the same 
in each. In the case of the beehive, the necessity 
for this close system of life has been very gradually 
imposed on its inhabitants ; and age-long custom, 
working on the individual, has at length produced 
a race marvellously adapted to its special needs. 
Probably the habit of retention of faeces while in 
