The Nuptial Flight 
mutters to herself, perhaps, ‘“‘and exist 
afterwards if you can; that is no concern 
of mine.” Do or desire what else we 
may, we find, evérywhere on our road, this 
morality that differs so much from our 
own. And note, too, in these same little 
creatures, her unjust avarice and insensate 
waste. From her birth to her death, the 
austere forager has to travel abroad in 
search of the myriad flowers that hide in 
the depths of the thicket. She has to 
discover the honey and pollen that lurk 
in the labyrinths of the nectaries and in 
the most secret recess of the anthers. And 
yet her eyes and olfactory organs are like 
the eyes and organs of the infirm compared 
with those of the male. Were the drones 
almost blind, had they only the most rudi- 
mentary sense of smell, they scarcely would 
suffer. They have nothing to do, no prey 
to hunt down; their food is brought to 
them ready prepared, and their existence is 
spent in the obscurity of the hive, lapping 
honey from the combs. But they are the 
agents of love; and the most enormous, 
most useless gifts are flung with both hands 
245 
