94 AUSTRALASIAN 
perpendicular. Some of our greatest naturalists have made 
the process of building up honey-comb their special study. 
‘The expedients tried by Huber unfolded the whole process. He 
was enabled to bring each bee so completely under view that it could 
be seen to extract with its hind feet one of the plates of wax from 
under the scales where they were lodged, and, carrying it to the 
mouth, in a vertical position, turn it round ; so that every part of its 
border was made to pass in succession under the cutting edge of the 
jaws. It was thus soon divided into small fragments; and a frothy 
liquor was poured upon it from the tongue, so as to form a perfectly 
plastic mass. This liquor gave the wax a whiteness and opacity 
which it did not possess originally, and at the same time rendered it 
tenacious and ductile. These materials, thus blended, having been 
accumulated in the hollow of the teeth, issued forth like a very narrow 
ribbon. The tongue, during this process, assumed the most varied 
shapes, and executed the most complicated operations; and after 
drawing out the whole substance of the ribbon in one direction drew 
it forth a second time in an opposite one. It was, doubtless, the 
issuing of this masticated mass from the mouth that mislead Reaumur 
and caused him to regard wax as nothing more than digested pollen.” 
—Bevan. 
ADVANTAGES OF THE HEXAGONAL FORM OF CELLS. 
There are only three geometrical figures into which a given 
plane surface can be divided into perfectly equal parts—the 
square, the triangle and the hexagon; and of these three the 
form which most nearly approaches that of a circle, and there- 
Fig. 31_—HEXAGONAL CELLS. Fig, 32._CIRCULAR CELLS. 
fore the most suited for the development of the larva and 
nymph forms of the young bees, is the hexagon. The above 
figures will exhibit at a glance the loss of space and the 
waste of material that must result if the cells of the comb were 
built of circular, as compared with the hexagonal form. 
