The Life of the Bee 
there can possibly be, the reason only 
can lie in the absence of a judge superior 
to ourselves. But it is well that argu- 
ment should make way for fact; and 
indeed, to the objection based on an 
experiment, the best reply of all must 
be a counter-experiment. 
In order to satisfy myself that hexag- 
onal architecture truly was written in the 
spirit of the bee, I cut off and removed 
one day a disc of the size of a five- 
franc piece from the centre of a comb, 
at a spot where there were both brood- 
cells and cells full of honey. I cut into 
the circumference of this disc, at the 
intersecting point of the pyramidal cells ; 
inserted a piece of tin on the base of one 
of these sections, shaped exactly to its 
dimensions, and possessed of resistance 
sufficient to prevent the bees from bend- 
ing or twisting it. Then I replaced the 
slice of comb, duly furnished with its 
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