APIS. 
343 
by three thus supporting one. Here comes the great 
wonder of the hive; here in this fragile structure abides 
a mystery that has perplexed man’s keenest sagacity. 
Is it accident or is it intelligence that instructs the bee, 
or is it the impulse of the instinct implanted by that 
Supreme Intelligence which gives man his reason and 
moulds all things to their most fitting use ? 
Ray’s view is precisely this; he says :—“ The bee, a 
creature of the lowest forms of animals, so that no man 
can suspect it to have any considerable measure of 
understanding, or to have knowledge of, much less to aim 
at, any end, yet makes her combs and cells with that 
geometrical accuracy, that she must needs be acted by 
an instinct implanted in her by the wise Author of Na¬ 
ture.” To support this idea of the geometrical skill of 
the bee, he cites “ the famous mathematician Pappus,” 
the Alexandrian, of the time of Theodosius the Great, 
w ho “ demonstrates it in the preface to his third book 
of Mathematical Collections .” “ First of all (saith he, 
speaking of the cells), it is convenient that they be of 
such figures as may cohere one to another, and have 
common sides, else there would be empty spaces left 
between them to no use but to the weakening and spoil¬ 
ing of the work, if anything should get in there, and 
therefore though a round figure be most capacious for 
the honey, and most convenient for the bee to creep into, 
yet did she not make choice of that, because then there 
must have been triangular spaces left void. Now 7 , there 
are only three rectilineous and ordinate figures, which 
can serve to this purpose, and inordinate, or unlike ones, 
must have been, not only less elegant and beautiful, but 
unequal. [Ordinate figures are such as have all their 
ides and all their angles equal.] The three ordinate 
