WAX, AND BEE ARCHITECTURE. 171 



flat, and those that are free curved, just as we dis- 

 cover them to be in honeycomb, where every free 

 wall at the edge of the comb runs in a sweep, al- 

 though partisans, like Lord Brougham, by example, 

 state the contrary. It has been advanced, in ppposi- 

 tion to this view of interference, that the outside cells 

 of the paper-nests of some wasps are angular ; but, 

 as Darwin* hints, this is capable of explanation, and 

 I submit that it is clearly due to the necessary work- 

 ing on both sides in alternation of three radiating 

 walls, and really lends confirmation to the position I 

 am arguing. To return to our bubbles. If a second 

 layer be placed over the first, not only will they be 

 hexagonal in cross section, but the superposed parts 

 of the two layers will frame themselves into rhombs 

 disposed in all respects like those of ideal comb. The 

 geometrical relations which embellish the wax tracery 

 of the bee are the necessary result of her mode of 

 proceeding. And mathematics is no more her endow- 

 ment than it is that of the soap and water we have 

 been considering. These wonders come because the 

 whole creation is founded and sustained by the great 

 Geometer, whose laws of weight and measure neither 

 falter nor vary, so that, for the advantage of man, 

 the experience and observation of the past make him 

 the prophet of the future. 



The costliness of wax to the bee, since it can only 

 be produced at the expense of many times its own 

 weight of honey or sugar, has led to great economy, 

 lib. of it being moulded into 35,000 worker cells 

 in a case I carefully examined ; but an American 



* " Origin of Species," chapter vii., li Cell-making Instinct." 



