INSECTS. 
171 
They have learned that the industrious Bees, impelled by 
nature to livo in society, combine to form a common 
structure of cells, for the reception of the eggs and young, 
which are to form the future commonwealth, and the 
store of food which is necessary for their nutrition. This 
work is to be formed out of wax — a substanco that does 
not exist as yet, but which is to bo elaborated by a natu- 
ral chemistry from the bodies of the Bees themselves. 
The cells aro perfoct hexagons, divided from each other 
by the thinnest possible walls that the material will sus- 
tain, and built in double series, the bottom-point of one 
being the point between the bases of three others, which 
open in the opposite direction. Now, it is found by ob- 
servation, that the walls are not built up in those thin 
plates, which we see them to be when perfected , but, on 
the contrary, that the wax is laid down in rounded knobs, 
out of which the cells are then excavated by the jaws of 
the workers, each one knowing exactly, by her wondrous 
instinct, how much may be pared away, without breaking 
into the domains of her fellow-artificers, who are similarly 
excavating on every side of her. 
But the labours of the Hive-Boo, though truly admir- 
tion of this very beautiful theorem, and at last demonstrated that, among all 
kinds of cells with pyramidal bases, that would require the least quantity of 
material which should have its base composed of three rhombs, the angles of 
which should measure respectively 109° 26' and 70° 34'. M. Mural di, another 
eminent naturalist, had in the meanwhile calculated, with as much accuracy 
as he was able, the real angles mot with in the cell of the Bee, which he had 
estimated, the former at 109° 28', the latter at 70° 32', leaving only two minutes 
of difference between the calculation and the result of measurement ; and more 
recent researches, couductod with the delicate instruments of modern science, 
have shewn ovon that slight discrepancy to be erroneous, and proved that the 
figures pointed out by mathematical research, and those adopted by the insect- 
labourer, are precisely identical. — ^Jones's “Nat. Hist, of Anim.,” ii. 235.) 
