The parcels of wax thus prepared are applied against the vault of the hive, the little builder arranging them in the direction she wishes them to take: when she has thus employed the whole plate that she had separated from her body, she takes a second, and proceeds in the same manner. At length she leaves her work, and is lost in the crowd of her companions. Another succeeds, and resumes the employment; then a third: all follow the same plan of placing their wax; and if one by chance gives it a contrary direction, another, coming after, sets it right. The result of all these operations is a little wall of wax, with uneven surfaces, five or six lines[1] long, two lines high, and half a line thick, which descends perpendicularly from the vault of the hive. In this first work there is no angle, nor any trace of the figure of the cells. It is a simple partition, in a right line, without any bend. Footnote 1: A line is the twelfth part of an inch. The wax-makers having thus laid the foundation of a comb, the nurse-bees come to model and complete the work. The former are the labourers, who convey the materials; the latter, the artists, who work them up into the required form. One of the nurse-bees places herself horizontally on the vault of the hive, her head corresponding to the centre of the wall which the wax-makers have left, and which is to form the partition of the comb into two opposite assemblages of cells; and rapidly moving her head, she moulds with her jaws a cavity which is to form the base of one of the cells. When she has worked some minutes she departs, and another takes her place, deepening the hollow, and heightening its sides by heaping up the wax to the right and left, by means of the teeth and fore feet. More than twenty bees successively employ themselves in this work. When arrived at a certain point, other bees begin on the yet untouched and opposite side of the mass, and commencing the bottom of _two_ cells, are in turn relieved by others. While still engaged in this labour the wax-makers return, and add to the mass, increasing its extent every way, the nurse-bees again continuing their operations. After having worked the bottoms of the cells of the first row into their proper forms, they polish them, and give them finish, while others begin the outline of a new series. [Illustration: COMMENCEMENT OF CELLS. ]