The Life of the Bee 
Need we wonder if our knowledge be as 
limited as our experience? The bees have 
existed many thousands of years; we have 
watched them for ten or twelve lustres. And 
if it could even be proved that no change 
has occurred in the hive since we first 
opened it, should we have the right to con- 
clude that nothing had changed before our 
first questioning glance? Do we not know 
that in the evolution of species a century is 
but as a drop of rain that is caught in the 
whirl of the river, and that millenaries glide 
as swiftly over the life of universal matter 
as single years over the history of a people? 
IOl 
But there is no warrant for the statement 
that the habits of the bees are unchanged. 
If we examine them with an unbiassed eye, 
and without emerging from the small area 
lit by our actual experience, we shall, on the 
contrary, discover marked variations. And 
who shall tell how many escape us? Were 
an observer of a hundred and fifty times our 
height and about seven hundred and fifty 
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