246 BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



believe that we are contemplating the very master- 

 piece of creation, and that we have before us a con- 

 centration of wisdom and of wonder for which we 

 should look elsewhere in vain. It has, by example, 

 almost become a fashion to tell us, as a modern 

 manual does, in reference to the production of queens, 

 that " we have here a fact which has no parallel 

 in natural history." A broader view will show, as 

 Ave have just seen, that not only is this untrue, but 

 that quite as surprising and unlookcd for methods 

 of sexual differentiation not infrequently occur. Our 

 very mistakes may help us upward ; for should not 

 the fact that the things which at first we think little 

 we afterwards discover to be great, and that the 

 more we study, the more we find there is to learn, 

 rather prove to us the unwisdom of supposing we 

 have already unfolded the greatest of all wonders, 

 teaching us that, as yet, we only discern few marvels 

 where there are many, and that, did we know Nature 

 as she is, we should see neither less nor greater, but 

 fulness of beauty everywhere, the exponent of a wisdom 

 past finding out? The oppressive infinitudes of as- 

 tronomy, and the equally inconceivable minuteness 

 revealed by the microscope, are but two phases of 

 the frame of the universe, which has touched infinity 

 at every point. Already, indeed, we get glimmer- 

 ings that the recognition of this fact will bs a goal 

 of science, which is now opening up to us, that not 

 only animals and plants have their wonders, but that 

 the very atoms are miracles of form and force, bound 

 together by relationships which are endless. 



