as those of a natural phenomenon, were to divert itself by laying traps of this kind for us?  Has it not taken us thousands of years to invent a sufficiently plausible explanation for the thunderbolt?  There is a certain feebleness that overwhelms every intellect the moment it emerges from its own sphere, and is brought face to face with events not of its own initiation.  And, besides, it is quite possible that if this ordeal of the trellis were to obtain more regularly and generally among the bees, they would end by detecting the pitfall, and by taking steps to elude it.  They have mastered the intricacies of the movable comb, of the sections that compel them to store their surplus honey in little boxes symmetrically piled; and in the case of the still more extraordinary innovation of foundation wax, where the cells are indicated only by a slender circumference of wax, they are able at once to grasp the advantages this new system presents; they most carefully extend the wax, and thus, without loss of time or labour, construct perfect cells.  So long as the event that confronts them appear not a snare devised by some cunning and malicious god, the bees may be trusted always to discover the best, nay, the only human, solution.  Let me cite an instance; an event, that, though occurring in nature, is still in itself wholly abnormal.  I refer to the manner in which the bees will dispose of a mouse or a slug that may happen to have found its way into the hive.  The intruder killed, they have to deal with the body, which will very soon poison their dwelling.  If it be impossible for them to expel or dismember it, they will proceed methodically and hermetically to enclose it in a veritable sepulchre of propolis and wax, which will tower fantastically above the ordinary monuments of the city.  In one of my hives last year I discovered three such tombs side by side, erected with party-walls, like the cells of the comb, so that no wax should be wasted.  These tombs the prudent grave-diggers had raised over the remains of three snails that a child had introduced into the hive.  As a rule, when dealing with snails, they will be content to seal up with wax the orifice of the shell.  But in this case the shells were more or less cracked and broken; and they had considered it simpler, therefore, to bury the entire snail; and had further contrived, in order that circulation in the entrance-hall might not be impeded, a number of galleries exactly proportionate, not to their own girth, but to that of the males, which are almost twice as large as themselves.  Does not this instance, and the one that follows, warrant our believing that they would in time discover the cause of the queen’s inability to follow them through the trellis?  They have a very nice sense of proportion, and of the space required for the movement of bodies.  In the regions where the hideous death’s-head sphinx, the acherontia atropos, abounds, they construct little pillars of wax at the entrance of the hive, so restricting the dimension as to prevent the passage of the nocturnal marauder’s enormous abdomen.