Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/112

108 in the bee, but in the Geometrician who made the bee, and made all things in number, weight, and measure. The cells in a honey-comb are of different dimensions, corresponding to the different classes of bees, of which they form the birth-place. Those of the workers (Pl. VI. fig. 1, c, c,) are in depth about five lines, or less than half an inch, and in diameter 2⅖ lines; those of the males (d, d, d, are between six and seven lines in depth, and 3⅓ in diameter. Both of these are ultimately employed, after the breeding season is past, as receptacles for honey. The male, or drone cells are few compared with those of workers, which last generally compose the whole of the central combs, while the first are most frequently constructed on the extremities of combs at some distance from the centre. It is curious to note the proceedings of the bees when about to pass from the construction of worker-cells to those of males. They do not all at once commence the latter of their full diameter; such a proceeding would utterly disorder the delicate arrangement of the bases of the cells. But they build a few rows of intermediate cells, whose diameter augments progressively, until they gain the proportion proper to the cells required. And in returning to those of workers, a similar gradation is rigidly observed. The irregularity apparent in these transition cells has been accounted a defect. It is, on the contrary, an additional instance of that wise instinct which teaches them to quit the ordinary mode of proceeding, when