the greatest possible amount of honey, with the least possible consumption of precious wax in their construction.  It has been remarked that a skilful workman, with fitting tools and measures, would find it very difficult to make cells of wax of the true form, though this is perfectly effected by a crowd of bees working in a dark hive.  Grant whatever instincts you please, and it seems at first quite inconceivable how they can make all the necessary angles and planes, or even perceive when they are correctly made.  But the difficulty is not nearly so great as it at first appears:  all this beautiful work can be shown, I think, to follow from a few very simple instincts.

I was led to investigate this subject by Mr. Waterhouse, who has shown that the form of the cell stands in close relation to the presence of adjoining cells; and the following view may, perhaps, be considered only as a modification of his theory.  Let us look to the great principle of gradation, and see whether Nature does not reveal to us her method of work.  At one end of a short series we have humble-bees, which use their old cocoons to hold honey, sometimes adding to them short tubes of wax, and likewise making separate and very irregular rounded cells of wax.  At the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in a double layer:  each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with the basal edges of its six sides bevelled so as to join on to a pyramid, formed of three rhombs.  These rhombs have certain angles, and the three which form the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the comb, enter into the composition of the bases of three adjoining cells on the opposite side.  In the series between the extreme perfection of the cells of the hive-bee and the simplicity of those of the humble-bee, we have the cells of the Mexican Melipona domestica, carefully described and figured by Pierre Huber.  The Melipona itself is intermediate in structure between the hive and humble bee, but more nearly related to the latter:  it forms a nearly regular waxen comb of cylindrical cells, in which the young are hatched, and, in addition, some large cells of wax for holding honey.  These latter cells are nearly spherical and of nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated into an irregular mass.  But the important point to notice, is that these cells are always made at that degree of nearness to each other, that they would have intersected or broken into each other, if the spheres had been completed; but this is never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax between the spheres which thus tend to intersect.  Hence each cell consists of an outer spherical portion and of two, three, or more perfectly flat surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three or more other cells.  When one cell comes into contact with three other cells, which, from the spheres being nearly of the same size, is very frequently and necessarily the case, the three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid; and this