THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY 79 



interest them only to the extent in which they provide 

 them with a basis, or point of departure, for their combs ; 

 and they very naturally pay not the slightest heed to the 

 desires or intentions of man. But if the apiarist have taken 

 the precaution of surrounding the upper lath of some of 

 these frames with a narrow fillet of wax, they will be quick 

 to perceive the advantage this tempting offer presents, and 

 will carefully extract the fillet, using their own wax as 

 solder, and will prolong the comb in accordance with the 

 indicated plan. Similarly — and the case is frequent in 

 modern apiculture — if all the frames of the hive into which 

 the bees have been gathered be covered from top to bottom 

 with leaves of foundation wax, they will not waste time in 

 erecting buildings across or beside these, or in producing 

 useless wax, but, finding that the work is already half 

 finished, they will be satisfied to deepen and lengthen each 

 of the cells designed in the leaf, carefully rectifying these 

 where there is the slightest deviation from the strictest vertical. 

 Proceeding in this fashion, therefore, they will possess in a 

 week a city as luxurious and well constructed as the one 

 they have quitted ; whereas, had they been thrown on their 

 own resources, it would have taken them two or three months 

 to construct so great a profusion of dwellings and storehouses 

 of shining wax. 



43 

 This power of appropriation may well be considered 

 to overstep the limit of instinct ; and indeed there can be 

 nothing more arbitrary than the distinction we draw between 



