of the tin with a kind of diaphanous
varnish.

If we wish to throw light on all the secrets of this geometrical
architecture, we shall find many more interesting questions to
examine--for example, that of the form of the first cells, which are
attached to the roof of the hive--a form which is modified so that the
cells can fit its curve and touch the roof at the greatest possible
number of points.

It would be necessary to notice also, not only the direction in which
the main streets of the hive run, but the alley-ways and passages
which run in and out and around the comb, as much for the circulation
of the air as for the traffic; and it should be remarked that these
are planned so as to avoid long detours or confusion in the
traffic....

Before we leave this subject let us, only for a minute, stop to
consider the wonderful and mysterious way in which the bees make their
plans and work together when they are occupied in carving out their
cells, on both sides of the comb, where neither can see the other.
Look through one of these transparent combs, and you will see clearly
and sharply cut out in this diaphanous wax a network of prisms
arranged in so perfectly fitting a manner that one might think they
were stamped out of steel.

Those who have never seen the inside of a hive can have little idea of
the appearance of these honeycombs. Let us take a countryman's hive in
which the bee has been left free to work as he pleases. This
bell-like shape is divided from top to bottom by five, six, eight, and
sometimes ten, slices of wax, so to speak, perfectly parallel with
each other, which take the exact shape of the curve of the walls of
the hive. Between each one of these slices is a space of about half an
inch in which the bees move about. When they begin to build one of
these slices at the top of the hive, the wall of wax is quite thick,
and hides entirely the fifty or sixty bees who are working on one side
from the fifty or sixty at work on the other. Unless they have a sight
which can pierce the most opaque bodies, neither can see what is doing
on the other side. Nevertheless, a bee on one side does not dig a hole
or add a fragment of wax which does not correspond exactly with a
protuberance or a cavity on the other side. How do they contrive to do
this? How does it happen that one does not dig too far, and the other
not far enough?

How is it that every angle coincides in such magnificent perfection?
Who tells the