344 SPECUL tl5Slii!TCTS. [Chap.VIIL 



spherical and of nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated 

 into an irregular mass. But the important point to 

 notice is, that these cells are always made at that degree 

 of nearness to each other that they would have inter- 

 sected or broken into each other if the spheres had been 

 completed; but this is never permitted, the bees building 

 perfectly flat walls of wax between the spheres which 

 thus tend to intersect. Hence, each cell consists of an 

 outer spherical portion, and of two, three, or more flat 

 surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three, or 

 more other cells. When one cell rests on three other 

 cells, which, from the spheres being nearly of the same 

 size, is very frequently and necessarily the case, the 

 three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid; and this 

 pyramid, as Huber has remarked, is manifestly a gross 

 imitation of the three-sided pyramidal base of the cell of 

 the hive-bee. As in the cells of the hive-bee, so here, 

 the three plane surfaces in any one cell necessarily enter 

 into the construction of three adjoining cells. It is ob- 

 vious that the Melipona saves wax, and what is more im- 

 portant, labour, by this manner of building; for the flat 

 walls between the adjoining cells are not double, but are 

 of the same thickness as the outer spherical portions, 

 and yet each flat portion forms a part of two cells. 



Eeflecting on this case, it occurred to me that if the 

 Melipona had made its spheres at some given distance 

 from each other, and had made them of equal sizes and 

 had arranged them symmetrically in a double layer, 

 the resulting structure would have been as perfect as the 

 comb of the hive-bee. Accordingly I wrote to Professor 

 Miller of Cambridge, and this geometer has kindly 

 read over the following statement, drawn up from his 

 information, and tells me that it is strictly correct: — 



