The Swarm 
E37] 
And now to return to our swarming 
hive, where the bees have already given 
the signal for departure, without waiting 
for these reflections of ours to come to an 
end. At the moment this signal is given, 
it is as though one sudden mad impulse 
had simultaneously flung open wide every 
single gate in the city; and the black 
throng issues, or rather pours forth in 
a double, or treble, or quadruple jet, as 
the number of exits may be; in a tense, 
direct, vibrating, uninterrupted stream 
that at once dissolves and melts into 
space, where the myriad transparent, furi- 
ous wings weave a tissue throbbing with 
sound. And this for some moments will 
to result from these estimates—— which are of course 
hypothetical, and deal with a matter that is exceed- 
ingly obscure — that the intellectual value of the bee 
and the ant must be more or less equal. 
121 
