The Life of the Bee 
dew still moisten the leaves and the flowers, 
when the last fragrance of dying dawn 
still wrestles with burning day, like a 
maiden caught in the arms of a heavy 
warrior; when through the silence of ap- 
proaching noon is heard, once and again, 
a transparent cry that has lingered from 
sunrise. 
Then she appears on the threshold—in 
the midst of indifferent foragers, if she have 
left sisters in the hive; or surrounded by a 
delirious throng of workers, should it be 
impossible to fill her place. She starts her 
flight backwards, returns twice or thrice 
to the alighting-board, and then, having 
definitely fixed in her mind the exact situa- 
tion and aspect of the kingdom she has 
never yet seen from without, she departs 
like an arrow to the zenith of the blue. 
She soars to a height, a luminous zone, 
that other bees attain at no period of their 
life. Far away, caressing their idleness in 
the midst of the flowers, the males have 
beheld the apparition, have breathed the 
magnetic perfume that spreads from group 
to group, till every apiary near is instinct 
248 
