THE COMB-BUILDERS an 



proved conclusively that the bee was right, while 

 the first mathematician was wrong. He showed 

 that the true answer to the problem of the angles 

 was 109° 28' and 70° 32' — identically the figures 

 obtained by estimation of the honey-comb. 



In the foregoing pages the principles involved 

 in the construction of honey-comb have been gone 

 into rather minutely, because it is here that the 

 lines of thought between the old and the new 

 naturalists seem to make a typical divergence. 

 Both schools ares in the main, agreed on the point 

 that all forms of life emanate from the one omni- 

 potent source ; and it matters little whether we 

 speak of the vast periods of time, during which the 

 creation of all things was effected, as ages, or under 

 the old Biblical metaphor of days. But whereas 

 the old school appears to insist on different qualities 

 of life — immortal soul in man, and a mystic, sub- 

 conscious, perishable thing called instinct in the 

 brute creation — the new school is unable to see any 

 distinction between the intellectual equipment of 

 man and brute, but that of degree. Between the 

 honey-bee and her masters there is indeed a great 

 gulf fixed, but it is conceivably not unbridgable. 

 And unless we are determined at all cost of logical 

 violence to force a favourite set of square opinions 

 into the round holes of observed fact, it is difficult 

 to see how the old position is long to remain tenable. 



With regard to this particular question of comb- 

 14 — 2 



