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 com- 

 pleted 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 intermediate between two adjoining spheres; but, 

 as far as I have seen, they never gnaw away and finish pflE 

 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-com- 

 menced cells, is important, as it bears on a fact, which 

 seems at first subversive of the foregoingtheory; namely, 

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

 sometimes 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. 



