348 SPECIAL INSTINCTS. [Chap. Yin. 



commenced cell, which were slightly concave on one 

 side, where I suppose that the bees had excavated too 

 quickly, and convex on the opposed side where the bees 

 had worked less quickly. In one well marked instance, 

 I put the comb back into the hive, and allowed the bees 

 to go on working for a short time, and again examined 

 the cell, and I found that the rhombic plate had been 

 completed, and had become perfectly flat : it was abso- 

 lutely impossible, from the extreme thinness of the little 

 plate, that they could have effected this by gnawing 

 away the convex side ; and I suspect that the bees in 

 such cases stand on opposite sides and push and bend 

 the ductile and warm wax (which as I have tried is 

 easily done) into its proper intermediate plane, and thus 

 flatten it. 



From the experiment of the ridge of vermilion wax 

 we can see that, if the bees were to build for themselves 

 a thin wall of wax, they could make their cells of 

 the proper shape, by standing at the proper distance 

 from each other, by excavating at the same rate, and by 

 endeavouring to make equal spherical hollows, but never 

 allowing the spheres to break into each other. Now 

 bees, as may be clearly seen by examining the edge of 

 a growing comb, do make a rough, circumferential wall 

 or rim all round the comb ; and they gnaw this away 

 from the opposite sides, always working circularly as 

 they deepen each cell. They do not make the whole 

 three-sided pyramidal base of any one cell at the same 

 time, but only that one rhombic plate which stands on 

 the extreme growing margin, or the two plates, as the 

 case may be ; and they never complete the upper edges 

 of the rhombic plates, until the hexagonal walls are 

 commenced. Some of these statements differ from 



