348 SPECIAL INSTINCTS. [Chap. VIIL 



base of a just commenced cell, which were slightly con- 

 cave on one side, where I suppose that the bees had ex- 

 cavated 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 be(3ome perfectly 

 flat: it was absolutely 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 



