THE SWARM 



distress, and anger; they have the ode of 

 the queen, the song of abundance, the 

 psalms of grief, and, lastly, the long and 

 mysterious war-cries the adolescent prin- 

 cesses send fonh during the combats and 

 massacres that precede the nuptial rlight. 

 May this be a fortuitous music that fails 

 to attain their inward silence ? In any 

 event they seem not the least disturbed 

 at the noises we make near the hive : 

 but they regard these perhaps as not of 

 their world, and possessed of no interest 

 for them. It is possible that we on our 

 side hear only a fractional part of the 

 sounds that the bees produce, and they 

 have many harmonies to which our ears 

 are not attuned. We soon shall see with 

 what startling rapidity they are able to 



[22] 



