Page:The life of the bee (IA cu31924101469827).pdf/131

The Swarm to that which already is seen? Where the anonymous prudence that selects and abandons, raises and lowers; that of so many workers makes so many queens, and of so many mothers can make a people of virgins? We have said elsewhere that it lodged in the "Spirit of the Hive," but where shall this spirit of the hive be looked for if not in the assembly of workers? To be convinced of its residence there, we need not perhaps have studied so closely the habits of this royal republic. It was enough to place under the microscope, as Dujardin, Brandt, Girard, Vogel, and other entomologists have done, the little uncouth and careworn head of the virgin worker side by side with the somewhat empty skull of the queen and the male's magnificent cranium, glistening with its twenty-six thousand eyes. Within this tiny head we should find the workings 119