rom a few very simple instincts.

I was led to investigate this subject by Mr. Waterhouse, who has shown
that the form of the cell stands in close relation to the presence of
adjoining cells; and the following view may, perhaps, be considered only
as a modification of his theory. Let us look to the great principle of
gradation, and see whether Nature does not reveal to us her method of
work. At one end of a short series we have humble-bees, which use their
old cocoons to hold honey, sometimes adding to them short tubes of wax,
and likewise making separate and very irregular rounded cells of wax. At
the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in
a double layer: each cell, as is well known, is an hexagonal prism, with
the basal edges of its six sides bevelled so as to join on to a pyramid,
formed of three rhombs. These rhombs have certain angles, and the three
which form the pyramidal base of a single cell on one side of the comb,
enter into the composition of the bases of three adjoining cells on the
opposite side. In the series between the extreme perfection of the cells
of the hive-bee and the simplicity of those of the humble-bee, we have
the cells of the Mexican Melipona domestica, carefully described
and figured by Pierre Huber. The Melipona itself is intermediate in
structure between the hive and humble bee, but more nearly related to
the latter: it forms a nearly regular waxen comb of cylindrical cells,
in which the young are hatched, and, in addition, some large cells of
wax for holding honey. These latter cells are nearly spherical and of
nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated into an irregular mass. But the
important point to notice, is that these cells are always made at that
degree of nearness to each other, that they would have intersected or
broken into each other, if the spheres had been completed; but this is
never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax between
the spheres which thus tend to intersect. Hence each cell consists of
an outer spherical portion and of two, three, or more perfectly flat
surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three or more other cells.
When one cell comes into contact with three other cells, which, from
the spheres being nearly of the same size, is very frequently and
necessarily the case, the three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid;
and this pyramid, as Huber has remarked, is manifestly a gross imitation
of the three-sided