The Life of the Bee 
hive be looked for if not in the assembly 
of workers? To be convinced of its resi- 
dence there we need not perhaps have 
studied so closely the habits of this royal 
republic. It was enough to place under 
the microscope, as Dujardin, Brandt, Girard, 
Vogel, and other entomologists have done, 
the little uncouth and careworn head of the 
virgin worker side by side with the some- 
what empty skull of the queen and the 
male’s magnificent cranium, glistening with 
its twenty-six thousand eyes. Within this 
tiny head we should find the workings of 
the vastest and most magnificent brain of 
the hive: the most beautiful and complex, 
the most perfect that, in another order and 
with a different organisation, is to be found 
in nature after that of man. Here again, 
as in every quarter where the scheme of 
the world is known to us, there where the 
brain is are authority and victory, wisdom 
and veritable strength. And here again 
it is an almost invisible atom of this 
mysterious substance that organises and 
subjugates matter, and is able to create 
its own little triumphant and permanent 
98 
