The Swarm 
35 
It is to the future, therefore, that the 
bees subordinate all things, and with a fore- 
sight, a harmonious co-operation, a skill in 
interpreting events and turning them to 
the best advantage, that must compel our 
heartiest admiration, particularly when we 
remember in how startling and supernatural 
a light our recent intervention must present 
itself to them. It may be said, perhaps, 
that in the last instance we have given they 
place a very false construction upon the 
queen’s inability to follow them. But 
would our powers of discernment be so 
very much subtler if an intelligence of 
an order entirely different from our own, 
and served by a body so colossal that its 
movements were almost as imperceptible 
as those of a natural phenomenon, were 
to divert itself by laying traps of this kind 
for us? Has it not taken us thousands of 
years to invent a sufficiently plausible ex- 
planation for the thunderbolt? There is 
a certain feebleness that overwhelms every 
gi 
