THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY 109 



The waxmakers having gathered around and formed 

 themselves into a dense festoon so that the necessary heat 

 might be maintained, other bees descended into the hole 

 and proceeded solidly to attach the metal, and connect it 

 with the walls of adjacent cells, by means of little waxen 

 hooks, which they distributed regularly over its surface. In 

 the upper semicircle of the disc they then began to construct 

 three or four cells, uniting these to the hooks. Each of 

 these transition, or accommodation, cells was more or less 

 deformed at the top, to allow of its being soldered to the 

 adjoining cell on the comb ; but its lower portion already 

 designed on the tin three very clear angles, whence there 

 ran three little straight lines that correctly indicated the 

 first half of the following cell. 



After forty-eight hours, and notwithstanding the fact 

 that only three bees at a time were able to work in the 

 cavity, the entire surface of the tin was covered with out- 

 lined cells. These were less regular, certainly, than those 

 of an ordinary comb ; wherefore the queen, having inspected 

 them, wisely declined to lay any eggs there, for the genera- 

 tion that would have arisen therefrom would necessarily have 

 been deformed. Each cell, however, was a perfect hexagon ; 

 nor did it contain a single crooked line, a single curved figure 

 or angle. And yet the ordinary conditions had all been 

 changed ; the cells had neither been scooped out of a block, 

 according to Huber's description, nor had they been designed 

 within a waxen hood, and from being circular at first, been 

 subsequently converted into hexagons by the pressure of ad- 

 joining cells, as explained by Darwin. Neither could there 

 be question here of recipi-ocal obstacles, the cells having been 



