THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE 207 



them clumsily, hampered by its very vastness. We must dis- 

 entangle, therefore, what now is obscure ; we must develop 

 the least intentions of the supernatural donor ; we must 

 build in a few days what would ordinarily take us years ; 

 we must renounce organic habits and fundamentally alter 

 our methods of labour. It is certain that all the attention 

 man could devote would not be excessive for the solution of 

 the problems that would arise, or for the turning to fullest 

 account the help thus offered by a magnificent providence. 

 Yet that is more or less what the bees are doing in our 

 modern hives.^ 



104 



I have said that even the policy of the bees is probably 

 subject to change. This point is the obscurest of all, and the 

 most difficult to verify. I shall not dwell on their various 

 methods of treating the queens, or on the laws as to swarm- 

 ing, that are peculiar to the inhabitants of every hive, and ap- 

 parently transmitted from generation to- generation, &c. ; but, 

 by the side of these facts which are not sufficiently estab- 

 lished, are others so precise and unvarying as to prove that 

 the same degree of political civilisation has not been attained 

 by all races of the domestic bee, and that, among some of 

 them, the public spirit still is groping its way, seeking, per- 

 haps, another solution of the royal problem. The Syrian 

 bee, for instance, habitually rears 120 queens, and often 



' As we are now concerned with the constructions of the bee, we may note, in passing, 

 a strange peculiarity of the Apis florea. Certain walls of its cells for males are cylindrical 

 instead of hexagonal. Apparently it has not yet succeeded in passing from one form to 

 the other, and in definitely adopting the better. 



