214 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



the regularity of the comb may be least interrupted. 

 Sometimes the change is contrived without any 

 appreciable loss of space, but more often several 

 misshapen cells have to be made before the sym- 

 metrical progress of the comb is resumed. This 

 depends largely on the inherited skill of the bees, 

 which varies according to their strain, as all ex 

 perienced bee-keepers know. 



Now, if the work of comb-building is carried 

 tljrough by the bees under blind compulsion of the 

 natural laws of mutual interference and pressure, 

 what other law, it may be asked, interferes with 

 these in turn when the transition from one size of 

 cell to another must be made ? If it is all a sort 

 of crystallisation going on independently of the 

 bees' will or wish, it appears more than curious 

 that the mill should grind large or small, just as 

 the needs of the hive demand it. 



But the whole position is really little else than 

 a flagrant example of the evils of argument from 

 a simile. Soaked peas in a bottle will swell to 

 hexagons, or rather, dodecahedrons, by the law of 

 mutual interference. Soap-bubbles will do the same 

 with no more constriction than their own weight. 

 But peas and bubbles are things self-contained and 

 separately existing, before being brought together. 

 If the bees made a vast number of separate, round 

 cells, and then combined them simultaneously, no 

 doubt all but the outside cells would assume the 

 hexagon form. But the essence of the whole art 



