The Life of the Bee 
of the vastest and most magnificent brain 
of the hive: the most beautiful and com- 
plex, the most perfect, that, in another 
order and with a different organisation, is 
to be found in nature after that of man. 
Here again, as in every quarter where 
the scheme of the world is known to us, 
there where the brain is, are authority 
and victory, veritable strength and wis- 
dom. And here again it is an almost 
invisible atom of this mysterious sub- 
stance that organises and  subjugates 
matter, and is able to create its own 
little triumphant and permanent place in 
the midst of the stupendous, inert forces 
of nothingness and death.! 
1 The brain of the bee, according to the calcula- 
tion of Dujardin, constitutes the 1-174th part of the 
insect’s weight, and that of the ant the 1—z96th. 
On the other hand the peduncular parts, whose de- 
velopment usually keeps pace with the triumphs the 
intellect achieves over instinct, are somewhat less 
important in the bee than in the ant, It would seem 
120. 
