924 i INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
the pyramidal form with which they set out.—In building 
the male cells, the bees begin their foundation with a 
block or mass of wax thicker and higher than that em- 
ployed for the cells of workers, without which it would 
be impracticable for them to preserve the same order and 
symmetry in working on a larger scale. 
Irregularities (to use the language of Huber, from 
whom the above details are abstracted,) have often been 
observed in the cells of bees. Reaumur, Bonnet and 
other naturalists cite them as so many examples of im- 
perfections. What would have been their astonishment 
if they had been aware that part of these anomalies are 
calculated ; that there exists as it were a moveable har- 
mony in the mechanism by which the cells are composed ! 
If, in consequence of the imperfection of their organs or 
of theix instruments, bees occasionally constructed some 
of their cells unequal, or of parts badly put together, it 
would still manifest some talent to be able to repair these 
defects, and to compensate one irregularity by another: 
but it is far more astonishing that they know how to quit 
their ordinary routine when circumstances require that 
they should build male cells; that they should be in- 
structed to vary the dimensions and the shape of each 
piece so as to return to a regular order; and that, after 
having constructed thirty or forty ranges of male cells, 
they again leave the regular order on which these were 
formed, and arrive by successive diminutions at the point 
from which they set out. How should these insects be 
able to extricate themselves from such a difficulty—from 
such a complicated structure? how pass from the little 
to the great, from a regular plan to an irregular one, 
