208 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
is strengthened throughout by a triple girdering. 
The result is that the amount of wax required in 
the construction of the comb can be everywhere 
reduced to an absolute minimum. It becomes 
merely a question of what thickness of wax will 
retain the honey ; and this experience proves to 
be no more than 74, part of an inch. The whole 
thing, indeed, might very well be taken as an 
ideal exemplar of the triumph of mind over 
matter. 
The geometric principles brought into play in 
the construction of honey-comb have been a 
favourite study with mathematicians of all ages, 
and especially this rhombiform method adopted 
by the bee in flooring her cells. The rhomb is 
best described as a plane-figure whose four sides 
are equal, like those of a square, but whose angles 
are not right angles. In such a figure there are 
necessarily two greater angles and two smaller, 
facing each other in pairs. The three rhombs 
composing the base of the honey-cell lean together, 
as has been seen, in the form of a blunt pyramid ; 
and—treating all angles as negligible factors—the 
bluntness of this pyramid is found to coincide very 
aptly with the shape of the full-grown larve. But 
this is not the only reason for the particular 
inclination given by the bee to the rhombs forming 
the base of each cell. Economy rules here, as in 
everything else she undertakes; and the truth that 
she has chosen the one and only form of cell-base 
