Chap. VIII.] CELL-MAKING INSTINCT. 351 



pieces of comb met at an angle, how often the bees would 

 pull down and rebuild in different ways the same cell, 

 sometimes recurring to a shape which they had at first 

 rejected. 



When bees have a place on which they can stand in 

 their proper positions for working, — for instance, on a 

 slip of wood, placed directly under the middle of a comb 

 growing downwards, so that the comb has to be built over 

 one face of the slip — in this case the bees can lay the 

 foundations of one wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly 

 proper place, projecting beyond the other completed cells. 

 It suffices that the bees should be enabled to stand at 

 their proper relative distances from each other and from 

 the walls of the last completed cells, and then, by striking 

 imaginary spheres, they can build up a wall inter- 

 mediate between two adjoining spheres ; but, as far as 

 I have seen, they never gnaw away and finish off' the 

 angles of a cell till a large part both of that cell and of the 

 adjoining cells has been built. This capacity in bees 

 of laying down under certain circumstances a rough 

 wall in its proper place between two just-commenced 

 cells, is important, as it bears on a fact, which seems at 

 first subversive of the foregoing theory ; namely, that 

 the cells on the extreme margin of wasp-combs are some- 

 times strictly hexagonal ; but I have not space here to 

 enter on this subject. Nor does there seem to me any 

 great difficulty in a single insect (as in the case of a 

 queen-wasp) making hexagonal cells, if she were to work 

 alternately on the inside and outside of two or three 

 cells commenced at the same time, always standing at 

 the proper relative distance from the parts of the cells 

 just begun, sweeping spheres or cylinders, and building 

 up intermediate planes. 



