The Foundation of the City 
cell on the comb; but its lower portion 
already designed on the tin three very 
clear angles, whence there ran three little 
straight lines that correctly indicated the 
first half of the following cell. 
After forty-eight hours, and notwith- 
standing the fact that only three bees at 
a time were able to work in the cavity, 
the entire surface of the tin was covered 
with outlined cells. These were less regular, 
certainly, than those of an ordinary comb; 
wherefore the queen, having inspected them, 
wisely declined to lay any eggs there, for 
the generation that would have arisen there- 
from would necessarily have been deformed. 
Each cell, however, was a perfect hexagon ; 
nor did it contain a single crooked line, 
a single curved figure or angle. And 
yet the ordinary conditions had all been 
changed ; the cells had neither been scooped 
out of a block, according to Huber’s de- 
scription, nor had they been designed 
within a waxen hood, and from being 
circular at first, been subsequently con- 
verted into hexagons by the pressure of 
adjoining cells, as explained by Darwin. 
165 
