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INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



of bees, that in general the form of the prisms or tubes of the 

 cells is more essential than that of their bottoms, since the 

 tetrahedral-bottomed transition cells, and even those cells 

 which being built immediately upon wood or glass were 

 entirely without bottoms, still preserved their usual shape of 

 hexagonal prisms. But a remarkable experiment of the 

 elder Huber shows that bees can alter even the form of their 

 cells when circumstances require it, and that in a way which 

 one would not have expected. 



Having placed in front of a comb which the bees were 

 constructing a slip of glass, they seemed immediately aware 

 that it would be very difficult to attach it to so slippery a 

 surface ; and instead of continuing the comb in a straight 

 line, they bent it at a right angle, so as to extend beyond the 

 slip of glass, and ultimately fixed it to an adjoining part of 

 the wood-work of the hive which the glass did not cover. 

 This deviation, if the comb had been a mere simple and 

 uniform mass of wax, would have evinced no small ingenuity; 

 but you will bear in mind that a comb consists on each side, 

 or face, of cells having between them bottoms in common ; 

 and if you take a comb, and, having softened the wax by 

 heat, endeavour to bend it in any part at a right angle, you 

 will then comprehend the difficulties which our little ar- 

 chitects had to encounter. The resources of their instinct, 

 however, were adequate to the emergency. They made the 

 cells on the convex side of the bent part of the comb much 

 larger, and those on the concave side much smaller than usual; 

 the former having three or four times the diameter of the 

 latter. But this was not all. As the bottoms of the small 

 and large cells were as usual common to both, the cells were 

 not regular prisms, but the small ones considerably wider at 

 the bottom than at the top, and conversely in the large ones! 

 What conception can we form of so wonderful a flexibility of 

 instinct? How, as Huber asks, can we comprehend the 

 mode in which such a crowd of labourers, occupied at the 

 same time on the edge of the comb, could agree to give to it 

 the same curvature from one extremity to the other ; or how 

 they could arrange together to construct on one face cells so 

 small, while on the other they imparted to them such en- 



