The Life of the Bee 
chant of the eager flowers, hymn of their 
gladness and echo of their soft fragrance, 
the voice of the white carnations, the 
marjoram, and the thyme. They have, 
however, a whole gamut of sounds that 
we can distinguish, ranging from pro- 
found delight to menace, distress, and 
anger; they have the ode of the queen, 
the song of abundance, the psalms of 
grief, and, lastly, the long and mysterious 
war-cries the adolescent princesses send 
forth during the combats and massacres 
that precede the nuptial flight. May this 
be a fortuitous music that fails to attain 
their inward silence? In any event they 
seem not the least disturbed at the noises 
we make near the hive; but they regard 
these perhaps as not of their world, and 
possessed of no interestfor them. It is 
possible that we on our side hear only 
a fractional part of the sounds that the 
bees produce, and that they have many 
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