ARTIFICIAL AIDS TO COMB-BUILDING. 
201 
pendicular, and, straightening under strain, it would 
no longer have prevented sagging. 
It is manifest from this consideration that, similarly, 
the rhomboids of the foundation are prone to sag; 
besides, it must not be forgotten that all substances, 
unless absolutely non-elastic, when bent are subjected 
to molecular strain, which operates in tending to 
restore straightness to them when softened. If a sheet 
of wax be bent by the fingers, it will be found 
(especially when warmed) to partially regain its original 
shape. In like manner, the flat wax-sheet is bent back- 
wards and forwards into “Vandykes,^’ in the horizontal 
as well as perpendicular line, as the cell bases are 
being marked upon it. The warmth of the bees, whilst 
elaborating the comb, inclines the sheet to reduce the 
bending it has received, and so become longer than 
the top bar holding it, compelling it thus to assume 
a waved form from end to end, while, from the same 
cause, its perpendicular measurement is increased — an 
effect all must have observed. My brush-made sheets 
flowed as liquid wax into the form they were intended to 
assume, and so possessed no such tendency. The cell- 
wall in foundation, then, is the solidifier, and hence 
needs, as Mr. Raitt has so wisely shown, to be made to 
fill the cut of the rolls. Theoretically, it would appear, 
from the foregoing, that flat-bottomed foundation would 
be stronger than that bearing the impress of the 
rhomboids. Practically, the opposite is true. I per- 
sonally inspected in an apiary, last summer, over one 
hundred sheets of flat-bottomed foundation, that had 
broken down and sunk into every conceivable curve, 
by the side of sheets made on a Root machine, not 
