Page - 283 - in The Origin of Species
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Text of the Page - 283 -
CELL-MAKING INSTINCT 283
about one-sixth of the diameter of the sphere of which they
formed a part, the rims of the basins intersected or broke
into each other. As soon as this occurred, the bees ceased to
excavate, and began to build up flat walls of wax on the
lines of intersection between the basins, so that each hex-
agonal prism was built upon the scalloped edge of a smooth
basin, instead of on the straight edges of a three-sided pyra-
mid as in the case of ordinary cells.
I then put into the hive, instead of a thick, rectangular
piece of wax, a thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, coloured
with vermilion. The bees instantly began on both sides to
excavate little basins near to each other, in the same way as
before; but the ridge of wax was so thin, that the bottoms
of the basins, if they had been excavated to the same depth
as in the former experiment, would have broken into each
other from the opposite sides. The bees, however, did not
suffer this to happen, and they stopped their excavations in
due time
; so that the basins, as soon as they had been a little
deepened, came to have flat bases; and these flat bases,
formed by thin little plates of the vermilion wax left un-
gnawed, were situated, as far as the eye could judge, exactly
along the planes of imaginary intersection between the
basins on the opposite sides of the ridge of wax. In some
parts, only small portions, in other parts, large portions of a
rhombic plate were thus left between the opposed basins,
but the work, from the unnatural state of things, had not
been neatly performed. The bees must have worked at very
nearly the same rate in circularly gnawing away and deep-
ening the basins on both sides of the ridge of vermilion wax,
in order to have thus succeeded in leaving flat plates between
the basins, by stopping work at the planes of intersection.
Considering how flexible thin wax is, I do not see that
there is any difficulty in the bees, whilst at work on the two
sides of a strip of wax, perceiving when they have gnawed
the wax away to the proper thinness, and then stopping their
work. In ordinary combs it has appeared to me that the
bees do not always succeed in working at exactly the same
rate from the opposite sides; for I have noticed half-com-
pleted rhombs at the base of a just commenced cell, which
•were slightly concave on one side, where I suppose that the
back to the
book The Origin of Species"
The Origin of Species
- Title
- The Origin of Species
- Author
- Charles Darwin
- Publisher
- P. F. Collier & Son
- Location
- New York
- Date
- 1909
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 10.5 x 16.4 cm
- Pages
- 568
- Keywords
- Evolutionstheorie, Evolution, Theory of Evolution, Naturwissenschaft, Natural Sciences
- Categories
- International
- Naturwissenschaften Biologie
Table of contents
- EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 5
- AN HISTORICAL SKETCH of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species 9
- INTRODUCTION 21
- Variation under Domestication 25
- Variation under Nature 58
- Struggle for Existence 76
- Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest 93
- Laws of Variation 145
- Difficulties of the Theory 178
- Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection 219
- Instinct 262
- Hybridism 298
- On the Imperfection of the Geological Record 333
- On the Geological Succession of Organic Beinss 364
- Geographical Distribution 395
- Geographical Distribution - continued 427
- Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs 450
- Recapitulation and Conclusion 499
- GLOSSARY 531
- INDEX 541