The Life of the Bee 
into many details that will have but slen- 
der interest for the reader, whose eyes 
perhaps may never have followed a flight 
of bees; or who may have regarded them 
only with the passing interest with which 
we are all of us apt to regard the flower, 
the bird or the precious stone, asking of 
these no more than a slight superficial 
assurance, and forgetting that the most 
trivial secret of the non-human object we 
behold in nature connects more closely 
perhaps with the profound enigma of our 
origin and our end, than the secret of 
those of our passions that we study the 
most eagerly and the most passionately. 
[ 60 ] 
And I will pass over too—in my de- 
sire that this essay shall not become too 
didactic — the remarkable instinct that in- 
duces the bees at times to thin and demol- 
ish the extremity of their combs, when 
207 
