224 
BEES AND BEE-KEEPING, 
Our chapter on Bee Architecture (Vol. I.), together 
with this we are now concluding, should leave our 
minds impressed with the richness of that treasure- 
house of beauty we call Nature. Man’s foundation 
has, indeed, accomplished much ; yet not because it 
is ‘‘an original,” but because it is “a copy.” It aids 
the bee by spreading out a wide field upon which 
may be exercised from the first the modelling energies 
of multitudes, which, in a state of nature, must, in 
quiescence, hang and wait until the labours of those 
above shall carry down the growing tracery to within 
their reach. It aids her, too, in saving the exhausting 
and expensive secretion of wax, by giving her second- 
hand material to use as new. Not less it aids her 
master, by compelling her to bend her will to his, 
and build upon the plan that he has traced, forming 
also her cells of the size that he directs, and so 
banishing from her home the drone he does not de- 
sire. But he has to “ stoop to conquer.” First, he 
must learn of her the wonders of her ways — pain- 
fully and slowly tracing out the intricate relations 
of the form which secures the fullest economy, the 
greatest strength, and the largest cell-accommodation ; 
and then, humbly imitating the pattern she has set, 
showing a wisdom she has not learned, and too 
profound to be her own, he verifies the proverb that 
“ in all labour there is profit,” by tripling a prosperity 
in which he is the self-constituted partner. 
