The Life of the Bee 
mathematical cities of our own honey-flies 
is like imagining a hamlet composed of 
primitive huts side by side with a modern 
town, whose ruthless regularity is the logical, 
though perhaps somewhat charmless, result 
of the genius of man, that to-day more 
fiercely than ever before seeks to conquer 
time, matter, and space. 
59 
There is a theory, originally propounded 
by Buffon and now revived, which assumes 
that the bees have not the least intention of 
constructing hexagons with a pyramidal base, 
but that their desire is merely to contrive 
round cells in the wax; only, that as their 
neighbours, and those at work on the oppo- 
site side of the comb, are digging at the 
same moment and with the same intentions, 
the points where the cells meet must of 
necessity become hexagonal. Besides, it is 
said, this is precisely what happens to 
crystals, the scales of certain kinds of fish, 
soap-bubbles, &c., as in the following ex- 
periment that Buffon suggested. “If,” he 
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