484: INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
On some occasions bees, in consequence of Huber’s 
arrangements in the interior of their habitations, have 
_ begun to build a comb nearer to the adjoining one than 
the usual interval; but they soon appeared to perceive 
their error, and corrected it by giving to the comb a 
gradual curvature, so as to resume the ordinary di- 
stance*. . 
In another instance, in which various irregularities 
had taken place in the form of the combs, the bees, in 
prolonging one of them, had, contrary to their usual 
custom, begun two separate and distant continuations, 
which in approaching instead of joining would have in- 
terfered with each other, had not the bees, apparently 
foreseeing the difficulty, gradually bent their edges so as 
to make them join with such exactness that they ould 
afterwards continue them conjointly®. 
In constructing their combs, bees, as you have been 
before told, in my letter on the habitations of insects, 
form the first range of cells—that by which the comb 
is attached to the top of the hive—of a different shape 
from the rest. Each cell instead of being hexagonal is 
pentagonal, having the fifth broadest side fixed to the top 
of the hive, whence the comb is much more securely ce- 
mented to that part, than if the first range of cells had 
been of the ordinary construction. For some time after 
their fabrication, the combs remain in this state; but at 
a certain period the bees attack the first range of cells 
as ifin fury, gnaw away the sides without touching the 
lozenge-shaped bottoms; and having mixed thei wax 
with propolis, they form a cement well known to the 
* Huber, ii. 239, » Thid. ii, 240. 
