forth the fraternal effort of the Panurgi?  And if we imposed abnormal conditions upon the Panurgi, would these, in their turn, progress from a general corridor to general cells?  If the mothers of the humble-bees were compelled to hibernate together, would they arrive at a mutual understanding, a mutual division of labour?  Have combs of foundation-wax been offered to the Meliponitae?  Would they accept them, would they make use of them, would they conform their habits to this unwonted architecture?  Questions, these, that we put to Very tiny creatures; and yet they contain the great word of our greatest secrets.  We cannot answer them, for our experience dates but from yesterday.  Starting with Reaumur, about a hundred and fifty years have elapsed since the habits of wild bees first received attention.  Reaumur was acquainted with only a few of them; we have since then observed a few more; but hundreds, thousands perhaps, have hitherto been noticed only by hasty and ignorant travellers.  The habits of those that are known to us have undergone no change since the author of the “Memoirs “published his valuable work; and the humble-bees, all powdered with gold, and vibrant as the sun’s delectable murmur, that in the year 1730 gorged themselves with honey in the gardens of Charenton, were absolutely identical with those that to-morrow, when April returns, will be humming in the woods of Vincennes, but a few yards away.  From Reaumur’s day to our own, however, is but as the twinkling of an eye; and many lives of men, placed end to end, form but a second in the history of Nature’s thought.

[109]

Although the idea that our eyes have followed attains its supreme expression in our domestic bees, it must not be inferred therefrom that the hive reveals no faults.  There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches absolute perfection,—­a perfection that all the geniuses in the world, were they to meet in conclave, could in no way enhance.  No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own; and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.

But the level of this perfection is not maintained throughout.  We have already dealt with a few faults and shortcomings, evident sometimes and sometimes mysterious, such as the ruinous superabundance and idleness of the males, parthenogenesis, the perils of the nuptial flight, excessive swarming, the absence of pity, and the almost monstrous sacrifice of the individual to society.  To these must be added a strange inclination to store enormous masses of pollen, far in excess of their needs; for the pollen, soon turning rancid, and hardening, encumbers the surface of the comb; and further, the long sterile interregnum between the date of the first swarm and the impregnation of the second queen, etc., etc.