The Foundation of the City 
of circumstance. The wasps, for instance, 
also build combs with hexagonal cells, so 
that for them the problem was identical, 
and they have solved it in a far less ingenious 
fashion. ‘Their combs have only one layer 
of cells, thus lacking the common base that 
serves the bees for their two opposite layers. 
The wasps’ comb, therefore, is not only less 
regular, but also less substantial; and so 
wastefully constructed that, besides loss of 
material, they must sacrifice about a third 
of their space, and a quarter of the energy 
they put forth. Again, we find that the 
trigone and melipone, which are veritable 
and domesticated bees, though of less ad- 
vanced civilisation, erect only one row of 
rearing-cells, and support their horizontal, 
superposed combs on shapeless and costly 
columns of wax. Their provision-cells are 
merely great pots, gathered together without 
any order; and, at the point between the 
spheres where these might have intersected 
and induced a profitable economy of space 
and material, the meliponz clumsily insert 
a section of cells with flat walls. Indeed, 
to compare one of their nests with the 
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