Page:The life of the bee (IA cu31924101469827).pdf/307



E will now consider the manner in which the impregnation of the queen-bee comes to pass. Here again nature has taken extraordinary measures to favour the union of males with females of a different stock; a strange law, whereto nothing would seem to compel her; a caprice, or initial inadvertence, perhaps, whose reparation calls for the most marvellous forces her activity knows.

If she had devoted half the genius she lavishes on crossed fertilisation and other arbitrary desires to making life more certain, to alleviating pain, to softening death and warding off horrible accidents, the 295