of the royal problem.  The Syrian bee, for instance, habitually rears 120 queens and often more, whereas our Apis Mellifica will rear ten or twelve at most.  Cheshire tells of a Syrian hive, in no way abnormal, where 120 dead queen-mothers were found, and 90 living, unmolested queens.  This may be the point of departure, or the point of arrival, of a strange social evolution, which it would be interesting to study more thoroughly.  We may add that as far as the rearing of queens is concerned, the Cyprian bee approximates to the Syrian.  And finally, there is yet another fact which establishes still more clearly that the customs and prudent organisation of the hive are not the results of a primitive impulse, mechanically followed through different ages and climates, but that the spirit which governs the little republic is fully as capable of taking note of new conditions and turning these to the best advantage, as in times long past it was capable of meeting the dangers that hemmed it around.  Transport our black bee to California or Australia, and her habits will completely alter.  Finding that summer is perpetual and flowers forever abundant, she will after one or two years be content to live from day to day, and gather sufficient honey and pollen for the day’s consumption; and, her thoughtful observation of these new features triumphing over hereditary experience, she will cease to make provision for the winter.* In fact it becomes necessary, in order to stimulate her activity, to deprive her systematically of the fruits of her labour.

Buchner cites an analogous fact.  In the Barbadoes, the bees whose hives are in the midst of the refineries, where they find sugar in abundance during the whole year, will entirely abandon their visits to the flowers.

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So much for what our own eyes can see.  It will be admitted that we have mentioned some curious facts, which by no means support the theory that every intelligence is arrested, every future clearly defined, save only the intelligence and future of man.

But if we choose to accept for one moment the hypothesis of evolution, the spectacle widens, and its uncertain, grandiose light soon attains our own destinies.  Whoever brings careful attention to bear will scarcely deny, even though it be not evident, the presence in nature of a will that tends to raise a portion of matter to a subtler and perhaps better condition, and to penetrate its substance little by little with a mystery-laden fluid that we at first term life, then instinct, and finally intelligence; a will that, for an end we know not, organises, strengthens, and facilitates the existence of all that is.  There can be no certainty, and yet many instances invite us to believe that, were an actual estimate possible, the quantity of matter that has raised itself from its beginnings would be found to be ever increasing.  A fragile remark, I admit, but the only one we can make on the hidden force that leads us; and it stands for much in a world where confidence in life, until certitude to the contrary reach us, must remain the first of all our duties, at times even when life itself conveys no encouraging clearness to us.