V 
THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 
84. 
WE will now consider the manner in which 
the impregnation of the queen-bee comes to 
pass. Here again Nature has taken extra- 
ordinary measures to favour the union of 
males with females of a different stock; a 
strange law whereto nothing would seem to 
compel her; a caprice, or initial inadver- 
tence, perhaps, whose reparation calls for the 
most marvellous forces her activity knows. 
If she had devoted half the genius. she 
lavishes on crossed fertilisation and other 
arbitrary desires to making life more certain, 
to alleviating pain, to softening death and 
warding off horrible accidents, the universe 
would probably have presented an enigma 
less incomprehensible, less pitiable, than the 
241 Q 
