The Life of the Bee 
figures to move in the elaborate mechan- 
isms we see in our village fairs. 
We might go lower still, and show, as 
Ruskin has shown in his “ Ethics of the 
Dust,” the character, habits, and artifices 
of crystals; their quarrels, and mode of 
procedure, when a foreign body attempts 
to oppose their plans, which are more 
ancient by far than our imagination can 
conceive; the manner in which they ad- 
mit or repel an enemy, the possible vic- 
tory of the weaker over the stronger, as, 
for instance, when the all-powerful quartz 
submits to the humble and wily epidote, 
and allows this last to conquer it; the 
struggle, terrible sometimes and some- 
times magnificent, between the rock-crystal 
and iron; the regular, immaculate expan- 
sion and uncompromising purity of one 
hyaline block, which rejects whatever is 
foul, and the sickly growth, the evident 
immorality, of its brother, which admits 
286 
