Of course I do not suppose for a moment that the bees themselves have made these calculations, but on the other hand I do not believe that chance, or accidental circumstance has brought about, these results.  The wasps, for instance, have built hexagonal cells, but they have not displayed such ingenuity as the bees have done.  Their combs have only one course of cells, and they have not the foundation which serves the bees for their double rows.  Hence there is less strength, more irregularity, and a loss of time, of material, and of room, which really means that a quarter of the labor employed and a third of the space occupied is lost.  We also find certain other domesticated bees, not so far progressed in civilization, which only build one row of cells for rearing their young, and which support horizontal combs one above another on costly columns of wax.  Their food store-cells, are like a row of round pots, and the bees make but a clumsy use of the spaces between them.  Indeed, when we compare their City with the Wonderful City of the bees of which we are speaking, it is like comparing a row of huts with a modern laid out city.  If the result is not charming, it is severely logical, and demonstrates the genius of the race which is forever fighting to get the most out of matter, space, and time.

Buffon had a theory which has been revived once more, that the bees did not intend to make hexagonal cells, but rather round ones, and that owing to the crowding of the workers all around, the round ones became hexagonal.  It is said also that crystals, fish-scales of certain kinds, soap-bubbles, etc., follow the same law, and Buffon advances this experiment to prove it.  “Take a vessel and fill it full with peas or any other round grains, pour as much water upon them as will fill the spaces between them, close the vessel tightly, and boil the water.  It will be found that the round peas have become six-sided.  One sees clearly that this must be so from purely mechanical causes; each one of the round grains tends in the course of swelling as it boils to fill up the utmost space that it can, and by the extension and pressure of all alike they become hexagonal.  Each bee wishes to occupy as much room as possible in its allotted space, therefore as the bodies of the bees are round or cylindrical, their cells become hexagonal because of the extension and pressure of all alike.”

Here then we see reciprocal obstacles working a wonder, somewhat in the same way perhaps as the vices of men bring about a general virtue, so that the race odious, often so far as individuals are concerned, is tolerable in the mass.  Broughman, Kirby, and Spence and others claim that the observations of soap-bubbles and peas prove nothing in this connection, for the effect of compression is only to produce irregular hexagonal forms, and does not explain the earlier form of the base of the cells.