The Life of the Bee 
The fact being incontestable, we must 
evidently admit that the exsertion of the 
organ is rendered possible only by the 
expansion of the tracheal vesicles. But if 
we, content with this fact, did not let our 
eyes roam beyond it; if we deduced there- 
from that every thought that rises too high 
or wanders too far must be of necessity 
wrong, and that truth must be looked for 
only in the material details; if we did not 
seek, no matter where, in uncertainties 
often far greater than the one this little 
explanation has solved, in the strange 
mystery of crossed fertilisation, for instance, 
or in the perpetuity of the race and life, 
or in the scheme of nature; if we did not 
seek in these for something beyond the 
current explanation, something that should 
prolong it and conduct us to the beauty 
and grandeur that repose in the unknown, 
I would almost venture to assert that we 
should pass our existence further away from 
the truth than those even who, in this case, 
wilfully shut their eyes to all save the 
poetic and wholly imaginary interpreta- 
tion of these marvellous nuptials. They 
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