The Life of the Bee 
She starts her flight backwards; returns 
twice or thrice to the alighting-board ; and 
then, having definitely fixed in her mind 
the exact situation and aspect of the king- 
dom she has never yet seen from without, 
she departs like an arrow to the zenith of 
the blue. She soars to a height, a lumi- 
nous zone, that other bees attain at no 
period of their life. Far away, caressing 
their idleness in the midst of the flowers, 
the males have beheld the apparition, 
have breathed the magnetic perfume that 
spreads from group to group till every 
apiary near is instinct with it. Immedi- 
ately crowds collect, and follow her into 
the sea of gladness, whose limpid bounda- 
ries ever recede. She, drunk with her 
wings, obeying the magnificent law of the 
race that chooses her lover, and enacts 
that the strongest alone shall attain her in 
the solitude of the ether, she rises still; 
and, for the first time in her life, the blue 
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