he result of the study of this problem in the highest
mathematics:

"Reaumur avait propose au celebre mathematicien Koenig le problem
suivant: 'Entre toutes les cellules hexagonales a fond pyramidal
compose de trois rhombes semblables et egaux, determiner celle qui
peut etre construite avec le moins de matiere?' Koenig trouva qu'une
telle cellule avait son fond fait de trois rhombes dont chaque grand
angle etait de 109 degres, 26 minutes et chaque petit de 70 degres, 34
minutes. Or, un autre savant, Maraldi, ayant mesure aussi exactement
que possible les angles des rhombes construits par les abeilles fixa
les grands a 109 degres, 28 minutes, et les petits a 70 degres, 32
minutes. Il n'y avait done, entre les deux solutions qu'une difference
de 2 minutes. II est probable que l'erreur, s'il y en a une, doit etre
imputee a Maraldi plutot qu'aux abeilles, car aucun instrument ne
permet de mesurer avec une precision infaillible les angles des
cellules qui ne sont pas assez nettlement definis."

Maclaurin, a Scotch physicist, checked Koenig's computations and
reported to the Royal Society in London in 1743 that he found a
solution in exact accord with Maraldi's measurements, thereby
completely justifying the mathematics of the bee architect.]

[Footnote 203: The Romans were as curious and as constant in the use of
perfumes as we are of tobacco. It is perhaps well to remember that
they might find our smoke as offensive as we would their unguents.]

[Footnote 204: Indeed one of the marvels of nature is the service
which certain bees perform for certain plants in transferring their
fertilizing pollen which has no other means of transportation. Darwin
is most interesting on this subject.]

[Footnote 205: The ancients, even Aristotle, did not know that the queen
bee is the common mother of the hive. They called her the king, and it
remained for Swammerdam in the seventeenth century to determine with
the microscope this important fact. From that discovery has developed
our modern knowledge of the bee; that the drones are the males and are
suffered by the (normally) sterile workers to live only until one of
them has performed his office of fertilizing once for all the new
queen in that nuptial flight, so dramatically fatal to the successful
swain, which Maeterlinck has described with wonderful rhetoric,
whereupon the workers massacre the surviving males without mercy. This
is the "driving out" which Varro mentions.]

[Footnot