94 AUSTRALASIAN 



perpendicular. Some of our greatest naturalists have made 

 the process of building up honey-comb their special study. 



" The expedients tried by Huber unfolded the whole process. He 

 was enabled to bring each bee so completely under view that it could 

 be seen to extract with its hind feet one of the plates of wax from 

 under the scales where they were lodged, and, carrying it to the 

 mouth, in a vertical position, turn it round ; so that every part of its 

 border was made to pass in succession under the cutting edge of the 

 jaws. It was thus soon divided into small fragments ; and a frothy 

 liquor was poured upon it from the tongue, so as to form a perfectly 

 plastic mass. This liquor gave the wax a whiteness and opacity 

 which it did not possess originally, and at the same time rendered it 

 tenacious and ductile. These materials, thus blended, having been 

 accumulated in the hollow of the teeth, issued forth like a very narrow 

 ribbon. The tongue, during this process, assumed the most varied 

 shapes, and executed the most complicated operations ; and after 

 drawing out the whole substance of the ribbon in one direction drew 

 it forth a second time in an opposite one. It was, doubtless, the 

 issuing of this masticated mass from the mouth that mislead Reaumur 

 and caused him to regard wax as nothing more than digested pollen." 

 — Bevan. 



ADVANTAGES OF THE HEXAGONAL FORM OF CELLS. 



There are only three geometrical figures into which a given 

 plane surface can be divided into perfectly equal parts — the 

 square, the triangle and the hexagon ; and of these three the 

 form which most nearly approaches that of a circle, and there- 



Fig. 31.— HEXAGONAL CELLS. Fig. 32.— CIRCULAR CELLS. 



fore the most suited for the development of the larva and 

 nymph forms of the young bees, is the hexagon. The above 

 figures will exhibit at a glance the loss of space and the 

 waste of material that must result if the cells of the comb were 

 built of circular, as compared with the hexagonal form. 



