in utter darkness! At the
utmost, she can have the indications of touch: not actual indications,
of course, for the pot is not there, but past indications, useless in
a work of precision. And yet the disk to be cut out must have a fixed
diameter: if it were too large, it would not go in; if too small, it
would close badly, it would slip down on the honey and suffocate the
egg. How shall it be given its correct dimensions without a pattern? The
Bee does not hesitate for a moment. She cuts out her disk with the same
celerity which she would display in detaching any shapeless lobe that
might do for a stopper; and that disk, without further measurement, is
of the right size to fit the pot. Let whoso will explain this geometry,
which in my opinion is inexplicable, even when we allow for memory
begotten of touch and sight.

One winter evening, as we were sitting round the fire, whose cheerful
blaze unloosed our tongues, I put the problem of the Leaf-cutter to my
family:

'Among your kitchen-utensils,' I said, 'you have a pot in daily use;
but it has lost its lid, which was knocked over and broken by the Tomcat
playing among the shelves. To-morrow is market-day and one of you will
be going to Orange to buy the week's provisions. Would she undertake,
without a measure of any kind, with the sole aid of memory, which we
would allow her to refresh before starting by a careful examination of
the object, to bring back exactly what the pot wants, a lid neither too
large nor too small, in short the same size as the top?'

It was admitted with one accord that nobody would accept such a
commission without taking a measure with her, or at least a bit of
string giving the width. Our memory for sizes is not accurate enough.
She would come back from the town with something that 'might do'; and it
would be the merest chance if this turned out to be the right size.

Well, the Leaf-cutter is even less well-off than ourselves. She has no
mental picture of her pot, because she has never seen it; she is not
able to pick and choose in the crockery-dealer's heap, which acts as
something of a guide to our memory by comparison; she must, without
hesitation, far away from her home, cut out a disk that fits the top of
her jar. What is impossible to us is child's-play to her. Where we could
not do without a measure of some kind, a bit of string, a pattern or
a scrap of paper with figures upon it, the little Bee needs nothing at
all. In housekeeping