The Foundation of the City 
resembling somewhat great slices of bread, 
that run in strictly parallel lines from the top 
of the dome to the floor, espousing closely 
the shape of the ovoid walls. Between 
these strips is contrived a space of about 
half an inch to enable the bees to stand and 
to pass each other. At the moment when 
they begin to construct one of these strips 
at the top of the hive, the waxen wall (which 
is its rough model, and will later be thinned 
and extended) is still very thick, and com- 
pletely excludes the fifty or sixty bees at 
work on its inner face from the fifty or 
sixty simultaneously engaged in carving the 
outer, so that it is wholly impossible for one 
group to see the other unless indeed their 
sight be able to penetrate opaque matter. 
And yet there is not a hole that is scooped 
on the inner surface, not a fragment of wax 
that is added, but corresponds with mathe- 
matical precision to a protuberance or cavity 
on the outer surface, and vice versd. How 
does this happen? How is it that one does 
not dig too deep, another not deep enough? 
Whence the invariable, magical coincidence 
between the angles of the lozenges? What 
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