The Progress of the Race 
the help thus offered by a magnificent 
providence. Yet that is, more or less, 
what the bees are doing in our modern 
hives.! 
[ 102 } 
I have said that even the policy of the 
bees is probably subject to change. This 
point is the obscurest of all, and the most 
difficult to verify. I shall not dwell on 
their various methods of treating the 
queens, or the laws as to swarming that 
are peculiar to the inhabitants of every 
hive, and apparently transmitted from 
generation to generation, etc.; but by 
the side of these facts which are not suffi- 
1 As we are now concerned with the construction of 
the bee, we may note, in passing, a strange peculiarity 
of the Apis Florea. Certain walls of its cells for males 
are cylindrical instead of hexagonal. Apparently she 
has not yet succeeded in passing from one form to the 
other, and indefinitely adopting the better, 
379 
