On the Threshold of the Hive 
from her element. She will dive for 
an instant into flower-filled space as the 
swimmer will dive into the sea that is 
filled with pearls, but under pain of death 
it behoves her at regular intervals to re- 
turn and breathe the crowd as_ the 
swimmer must return and breathe the 
air. Isolate her, and however abundant 
the food or favourable the temperature, 
she will expire in a few days, not of hunger 
or cold, but of loneliness. From the 
crowd, from the city, she derives an in- 
visible aliment that is as necessary to 
her as honey. This craving will help to 
explain the spirit of the laws of the hive. 
For in them the individual is nothing, 
her existence conditional only, and herself, 
for one indifferent moment, a winged organ 
of the race. Her whole life is an entire 
sacrifice to the manifold, everlasting being 
whereof she forms part. It is strange to 
note that it was not always so. We find 
even to-day, among the melliferous hymen- 
optera, all the stages of progressive civilisa- 
tion of our own domestic bee. At the 
bottom of the scale we find her working 
25 
