220 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



humble-bees never exceeds a certain limit, their laws are ill 

 defined and ill obeyed, primitive cannibalism and infanticide 

 reappear at intervals, the architecture is shapeless, and entails 

 much waste of material ; but the cardinal difference between 

 the two cities is that the one is permanent and the other 

 ephemeral. For, indeed, that of the humble-bee will perish 

 in the autumn ; its three or four hundred inhabitants will 

 die, leaving no trace of their passage or their endeavours, and 

 but a single female will survive who, the next spring, in the 

 same solitude and poverty as her mother before her, will re- 

 commence the same useless work. The idea, however, has 

 now grown aware of its strength. Among the humble-bees 

 it goes no further than we have stated, but, faithful to its 

 habits and pursuing its usual routine, it will immediately 

 undergo a sort of unwearying metempsychosis, and re-incarnate 

 itself, trembling with its last triumph, rendered all-powerful 

 now and nearly perfect, in another group, the last but one 

 of the race, that which immediately precedes our domestic 

 bee wherein it attains its crown : the group of the Meliponit^e, 

 which comprises the tropical MeliponcE and Trigone. 



II I 



Here the organisation is as complete as in our hives. 

 There is an unique mother, there are sterile workers and 

 males. Certain details even seem better devised. The males, 

 for instance, are not wholly idle ; they secrete wax. The 

 entrance to the hive is more carefully guarded ; it has a door 

 that can be closed when nights are cold, and when these are 

 warm a kind of curtain will admit the air. 



