i64 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



of the infirm compared with those of the male. Were the 

 drones almost blind, had they only the most rudimentary 

 sense of smell, they scarcely would suffer. They have nothing 

 to do, no prey to hunt down ; their food is brought to them 

 ready prepared, and their existence is spent in the obscurity of 

 the hive, lapping honey from the combs. But they are the 

 agents of love ; and the most enormous, most useless gifts are 

 flung with both hands into the abyss of the future. Out of a 

 thousand of them, one only, once in his life, will have to seek, 

 in the depths of the azure, the presence of the royal virgin. 

 Out of a thousand one only will have, for one instant, to 

 follow in space the female who desires not to escape. That 

 suffices. The prejudiced potentate flings open her treasury, 

 wildly, even deliriously. To every one of these unlikely lovers, 

 of whom nine hundred and ninety-nine will be put to death 

 a few days after the fatal nuptials of the thousandth, she has 

 given thirteen thousand eyes on each side of his head, while 

 the worker has only six thousand. According to Cheshire's 

 calculations, she has provided each of their antennae with 

 thirty-seven thousand eight hundred olfactory cavities, while 

 the worker has only five thousand in both. There we have an 

 instance of the almost universal disproportion that exists between 

 the gifts she rains upon love and her niggardly doles to labour ; 

 between the favours she accords to what shall, in an ecstasy, 

 create new life, and the indifference wherewith she regards 

 what will patiently have to maintain itself by toil. Whoever 

 would seek faithfully to depict the character of Nature, in 

 accordance with the traits we discover here, would design 

 an extraordinary figure, very foreign to our ideal, which 

 nevertheless can only emanate from her. But too many things 



