Suppose, however, that another sort of change be made. Let a nest, consisting of a cell that is in an early stage of construction, be taken away, and let there be substituted for it a cell built and partially stored with food. It might be supposed that the bee would gladly welcome this change, for the adoption of the substituted cell would save it a great deal of work. Not so, however; the bee in such a case will take to the substituted cell, but will go on building at it although it is already of the full height, and will continue building at it until the cell is made as much as a third more than the regulation height. In fact the bee, being in the building stage of its operations, goes on building, although in so doing it is carrying on a useless, if not an injurious, work. A similar state ensues when the Insect ceases to build and begins to bring provisions to the nest; although a substituted cell may contain a sufficient store of food, the bee goes on adding to this, though it is wasting its labours in so doing. It should be noted that though the bee must go through the {42}appropriate stages of its labours whether the result of so doing be beneficial or injurious, yet it is nevertheless to some extent controlled by the circumstances, for it does not in such cases complete what should have been the full measure of its own individual work; it does not, for instance, raise the cell to twice the natural height, but stops building when the cell is about one-third larger than usual, as if at that stage the absurdity of the situation became manifest to it. Fabre's experiments with the _Chalicodoma_ are so extremely instructive as regards the nature of instinct in some of the highest Insects, that we must briefly allude to some other of his observations even at the risk of wearying the reader who feels but little interest in the subject of Insect intelligence.