THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY -j-j 



may really be termed the factory of the model apiarist of 

 to-day. An edifice, this, that can contain more than three 

 hundred pounds of honey, in three or four storeys of super- 

 posed combs enclosed in a frame which permits of their 

 being removed and handled, of the harvest being extracted 

 through centrifugal force by means of a turbine, and of 

 their being then restored to their place like a book, in a 

 w^ell-ordered library. 



And one fine day the industry or caprice of man will 

 install a docile swarm in one of these disconcerting abodes. 

 And there the little insect is expected to learn its bearings, 

 to find its way, to establish its home ; to modify the seem- 

 ingly unchangeable plans dictated by the nature of things. 

 In this unfamiliar place it is required to determine the site 

 of the winter storehouses, that must not extend beyond the 

 zone of heat that issues from the half-numbed inhabitants ; it 

 must divine the exact point where the brood-cells shall con- 

 centrate, under penalty of disaster should these be too high 

 or too low, too near to or far from the door. The swarm, 

 it may be, has just left the trunk of a fallen tree, containing 

 one long, narrow, depressed, horizontal gallery ; and it finds 

 itself now in a tower-shaped edifice, whose roof is lost in 

 gloom. Or to take a case that is more usual, perhaps, and 

 one that will give some idea of the surprise habitually in 

 store for the bees : after having lived, for centuries past, 

 beneath the straw dome of our village hives, they are suddenly 

 transplanted to a species of mighty cupboard, or chest, three 

 or four times as large as the place of their birth ; and 

 installed in the midst of a confused scaffolding of superposed 

 frames, some running parallel to the entrance and some 



