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The Life of the Bee I have seen thousands strained out from the syrups in which they had perished; thousands more alighting even on the boiling sweets; the floors covered and windows darkened with bees, some crawling, others flying, and others still so completely besmeared as to be able neither to crawl nor to fly—not one in ten able to carry home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the air filled with new hosts of thoughtless comers."

This, however, seems to me no more conclusive than might be the spectacle of a battlefield, or of the ravages of alcoholism, to a superhuman observer bent on establishing the limits of human understanding. Indeed, less so, perhaps; for the situation of the bee, when compared with our own, is strange in this world. It was intended to live in the midst of an indifferent and unconscious nature, and not by the side of an extraordinary being 148