Thus, of their own accord, they vary the configuration and extent of the cellules. And they vary them yet more, according to the obstacles they encounter. If room be denied them, they reduce the size of their hexagons in due proportion and with extreme address. This fact Huber verified by some ingenious experiments. He bethought himself of deranging their operations by placing, instead of wood, a plate of glass against the wall of the hive where they were building up their cells. From the distance they saw this smooth shining crystal, to which nothing could be fixed; and taking their measures accordingly, they curved their cake in such a manner that it went past the glass and joined on to the wood. But, to carry out the alteration, it became necessary to change the diameter of the cells; to enlarge that of the convex portion, and diminish that of the concave. A delicate problem! and yet it was readily solved by the skilful architects.
In mid-winter, says Huber again, in their season of inertia, an over-heavy slab of wax fell away, but was checked en route by the cakes beneath. An avalanche seemed imminent! But the bees invented buttresses and barriers in strong mastic, which, supporting the fallen cake and propping up the sides of the hive, prevented the dangerous ruin from dragging down the inner edifice. Then, to prevent the occurrence of similar misfortunes, they created some novel architectural works in the shape of flying buttresses, bulwarks, pillars, cross-beams, and the like.
Novel! Ay, this is a sufficient refutation of Buffon's theory. That machines or automata could invent, is a thing not easily explicable. Yet the sovereign authority of this great dictator of natural history would have prevailed, perhaps, over facts and over observation, if, towards the close of the last century, the bees themselves, by an unforeseen stroke, had not definitively cut the Gordian knot.
It was about the epoch of the American, and shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution. An unknown creature then made its appearance over all Europe,—of a frightful figure,—a great strong nocturnal butterfly, marked very plainly in tawny-gray, with a hideous death's head. This sinister being, which none had seen before, alarmed every countryside, and seemed an omen of the most terrible misfortunes. Yet, in truth, those who were terrified by it had brought it into Europe. It had come in the grub condition with its natal plant, the American potato,—the fashionable vegetable which Parmentier extolled, Louis XVI. protected, and which spread in all directions. The savants baptized the insect with a somewhat horrifying name—the Sphinx Atropos.
And terrible indeed was this new creature, but only for the honey. Of this it was remorselessly greedy, and to attain it was capable of everything. A hive of thirty thousand bees could not daunt it. In the depths of night, the rapacious monster, profiting by the hour when the approaches to the city are less carefully guarded, with a gloomy but subdued sound, as if stifled by the soft down which covers it (and all other nocturnal insects), invaded the hive, swooped down on the combs, devoured and plundered, gutted and destroyed the magazines, and slew the infant bees. In vain they awoke, and flew to arms; their sting could not penetrate through the soft elastic padding which clothed the sphinx,—like the cotton armour worn by the Mexicans in the days of Cortez, and impenetrable by Spanish weapons.
Huber meditated on the best means of protecting his bees against this shameless brigand. Should it be by gratings, or doors? And how? He could not determine. The most skilfully devised barriers have always the inconvenience of impeding the great movement of ingress and egress, which takes place at the threshold of the hive. Their impatience regarded as intolerable the obstructions, which could not fail to embarrass them, and against which they might break their wings.
One morning, Huber's faithful assistant, who seconded him in his experiments, brought information that the bees themselves had already solved the problem. In different hives they had conceived and attempted various systems of defence and fortification. Here they constructed a wall of wax, with narrow loopholes, through which the great enemy could not pass. There, by a more ingenious expedient, without creating a single impediment, they built up some inter-crossing arcades at the gates, or tiny cloisters one behind the other, but running in different directions,—that is to say, to the void left by the first corresponded the substance of the second. Thus was secured a number of openings for the impatient buzzing crowd, which might go in and out as usual, with no other difficulty than that of moving in a slightly zigzag fashion. At the same time, a complete barrier was obtained against the great and big enemy, which could no longer enter with expanded wings, nor even glide uninjured through the narrow corridors.
It was the coup d'êtat of the brute creation, the revolution of the insects, executed by the bees, not only against their plunderers, but against the calumniators who had denied their intelligence. The theorists who had refused to believe in it, the Malebranches and the Buffons, were compelled to own themselves beaten. They had to adopt the reserve of eminent observers, like Swammerdam and Réaumur, who, far from questioning the genius of insects, furnish us with numerous facts in proof of its flexibility, of its rising to the measure of great dangers, of its scorn of routine, and of its power to make unexpected progress under certain circumstances.
