lion wax left
ungnawed, were situated, as far as the eye could judge, exactly along
the planes of imaginary intersection between the basins on the opposite
side of the ridge of wax. In some parts, only small portions, in other
parts, large portions of a rhombic plate were thus left between the
opposed basins, but the work, from the unnatural state of things, had
not been neatly performed. The bees must have worked at very nearly the
same rate in circularly gnawing away and deepening the basins on both
sides of the ridge of vermilion wax, in order to have thus succeeded in
leaving flat plates between the basins, by stopping work at the planes
of intersection.

Considering how flexible thin wax is, I do not see that there is any
difficulty in the bees, whilst at work on the two sides of a strip
of wax, perceiving when they have gnawed the wax away to the proper
thinness, and then stopping their work. In ordinary combs it has
appeared to me that the bees do not always succeed in working at exactly
the same rate from the opposite sides; for I have noticed half-completed
rhombs at the base of a just-commenced cell, which were slightly concave
on one side, where I suppose that the bees had excavated too quickly,
and convex on the opposed side where the bees had worked less quickly.
In one well-marked instance, I put the comb back into the hive, and
allowed the bees to go on working for a short time, and again examined
the cell, and I found that the rhombic plate had been completed, and had
become PERFECTLY FLAT: it was absolutely impossible, from the extreme
thinness of the little plate, that they could have effected this by
gnawing away the convex side; and I suspect that the bees in such cases
stand in the opposed cells and push and bend the ductile and warm wax
(which as I have tried is easily done) into its proper intermediate
plane, and thus flatten it.

From the experiment of the ridge of vermilion wax we can see that, if
the bees were to build for themselves a thin wall of wax, they could
make their cells of the proper shape, by standing at the proper distance
from each other, by excavating at the same rate, and by endeavouring to
make equal spherical hollows, but never allowing the spheres to break
into each other. Now bees, as may be clearly seen by examining the edge
of a growing comb, do make a rough, circumferential wall or rim all
round the comb; and they gnaw this away from the opposite sides, always
working c