THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY iii 



cuts in every direction and prevent the traffic becoming con- 

 gested, while ensuring free circulation of air. And finally 

 we should have to study the construction of transition cells, 

 wherein we see a unanimous instinct at work that impels 

 the bees at a given moment to increase the size of their 

 dwellings. Three reasons may dictate this step : an extra- 

 ordinary harvest may call for larger receptacles, the workers 

 may consider the population to be sufficiently numerous, or it 

 may have become necessary that males should be born. Nor 

 can we in such cases refrain from admiring the ingenious 

 economy, the unerring, harmonious conviction, with which 

 the bees will pass from the small to the large, from the large 

 to the small ; from perfect symmetry to, where unavoidable, 

 its very reverse, returning to ideal regularity as soon as 

 the laws of a live geometry will allow ; and all the time not 

 losing a cell, not suffisring a single one of their numerous 

 structures to be sacrificed, to be ridiculous, uncertain, or bar- 

 barous, or any section thereof to become unfit for use. But 

 I fear that I have already wandei'ed into many details that 

 will have but slender interest for the reader whose eyes 

 perhaps may never have followed a ffight of bees, or who 

 may have regarded them only with the passing interest with 

 which we are all of us apt to regard the flower, the bird, 

 or the precious stone, asking of these no more than a slight 

 superficial assurance ; and forgetting that the most trivial 

 secret of the non-human object we behold in nature connects 

 more closely perhaps with the profound enigma of our origin 

 and our end, than the secret of those of our passions that 

 we study the most eagerly and most passionately. 



