The Life of the Bee 
harvest may call for larger receptacles, 
the workers may consider the popula- 
tion to be sufficiently numerous, or it 
may have become necessary that males 
should be born. Nor can we in such 
cases refrain from admiring the ingenious 
economy, the unerring, harmonious con- 
viction, with which the bees will pass from 
the small to the large, from the large to 
the small; from perfect symmetry to, where 
unavoidable, its very reverse, returning to 
ideal regularity as soon as the laws of a 
live geometry will allow; and all the time 
not losing a cell, not suffering a single one 
of their numerous structures to be sacri- 
ficed, to be ridiculous, uncertain, or bar- 
barous, or any section thereof to become 
unfit for use. But I fear that I have 
already wandered into many details that 
will have but slender interest for the 
reader whose eyes perhaps may never have 
followed a flight of bees, or who may 
have regarded them only with the passing 
interest with which we are all of us apt 
to regard the flower, the bird, or the precious 
stone, asking of these no more than a slight 
168 
