136 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
given way to an incontrollable impulse against all 
their principles and inherited traditions of right, and 
that now, hanging thoroughly sobered and shamed 
and disillusioned, homeless and beggared, they 
realise themselves face to face with the unforeseen 
consequences of their thoughtless act. It is just 
the conduct which might be expected of some savage 
human race, pent up for long years in the rigid 
bounds of an alien civilisation, which in one blind 
moment has thrown to the four winds all its irksome 
blessings, only to realise, when the first glowing 
hour of freedom is over, that their long captivity 
has made the old wild life no longer possible in fact. 
Some such period of deep despondency as has come 
to the silent swarm in the hedgerow can be imagined 
as inevitably falling on such a race of men. But if 
the conquerors were to follow the absconding tribe 
into the lean wilderness and bring them home again 
repentant, restoring them to their old shelter and 
plenty once more, probably they would vent their 
satisfaction in a chorus of joyful approval. And it 
is just this which seems to be happening when the 
swarm is shaken down in front of a new, well- 
furnished hive. The first bees that find their way 
into the cool dark interior set up a jubilant hum 
unlike any other sound known in beecraft. At once 
the strain is taken up by all the rest, and the whole 
multitude marches into the new home to a tune 
which the least fanciful must concede is nothing but 
sheer satisfaction melodised. : 
There is little in all this which suggests a race of 
creatures bound within the hard and fast laws of an 
implanted instinct, which it is neither in their power 
nor their pleasure to override. It is true that in the 
