Page - 285 - in The Origin of Species
Image of the Page - 285 -
Text of the Page - 285 -
CELL-MAKING INSTINCT 285
between two adjoining spheres. I have several specimens
showing clearly that they can do this. Even in the rude
circumferential rim or wall of wax round a growing comb,
flexures may sometimes be observed, corresponding in posi-
tion to the planes of the rhombic basal plates of future cells.
But the rough wall of wax has in every case to be finished
off, by being largely gnawed away on both sides. The
manner in which the bees build is curious ; they always make
the first rough wall from ten to twenty times thicker than
the excessively thin finished wall of the cell, which will
ultimately be left. We shall understand how they work, by
supposing masons first to pile up a broad ridge of cement,
and then to begin cutting it away equally on both sides near
the ground, till a smooth, very thin wall is left in the middle ;
the masons always piling up the cut-away cement, and
adding fresh cement on the summit of the ridge. We shall
thus have a thin wall steadily growing upward but always
crowned bv a gigantic coping. From all the cells, both those
just commenced and those completed, being thus crowned by
a strong coping of wax, the bees can cluster and crawl over
the com.b without injuring the delicate hexagonal walls.
These walls, as Professor Miller has kindly ascertained for
me, vary greatly in thickness; being, on an average of
twelve measurements made near the border of the comb,
T-W of an inch in thickness; whereas the basal rhomboidal
plates are thicker, nearly in the proportion of three to two,
having a mean thickness, from twenty-one measurements,
of ^i^-g of an inch. By the above singular manner of build-
ing, strength is continually given to the comb, with the ut-
most ultimate economy of wax.
It seems at first to add to the difficulty of understanding
how the cells are made, that a multitude of bees all work
together ; one bee after working a short time at one cell
going to another, so that, as Huber has stated, a score of in-
dividuals work even at the commencement of the first cell.
I was able practically to show this fact, by covering the
edges of the hexagonal walls of a single cell, or the extreme
margin of the circumferential rim of a growing comb, with
an extremely thin layer of melted vermilion wax; and I in-
variably found that the colour was most delicately diffused
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