But if no objection of this kind offers itself in a huge factory of this kind, the bees will calmly go their own way, paying no heed whatever to man's desires or intentions; the frames seem to them of use for their combs, they will readily accept them. This will be more particularly the case if the bee-keeper has artfully surrounded the upper layers of the comb with a little strip of wax; the bees will pick out the wax, and go on with the comb. If this should be covered all over with leaves of foundation-wax, the bees will often be content to deepen and lengthen the cells that have been traced out in the leaves, but will be careful to alter the position of the cells should these not form an absolutely straight line. And thus, in the space of a week, they will be in possession of a city as comfortable and well-built as the one they have left; whereas, in the ordinary way, if all the work had had to be done by them, it would have taken them two or three months to erect the buildings and storehouses out of their own shining wax. Sir John Lubbock, who has written many interesting books on ants, bees, and wasps, does not believe that the bee has any real intelligence of its own, once it departs from what it has always been accustomed to do. And as a proof of this he mentions an experiment that any one can try for himself. If you put half a dozen bees, and the same number of flies into a bottle, then place the bottle on the table with its foot to the window, you will find that the bees will be quite unable to find their way out, and will go on flinging themselves against the glass, till they die of fatigue and hunger; while the flies will all have escaped, in less than two minutes, through the open neck of the bottle. Sir John Lubbock concludes from this that the bee cannot reason at all, and that the fly shows more ingenuity in getting out of a difficulty. It is not quite sure, however, that this conclusion is the right one. If you take up the bottle and turn it round and round, holding now the neck and now the foot to the window, you will find that the bees will turn with it, so as always to face the light. It is their love of the light, it is actually because of their intelligence, that they come to grief in this experiment. They feel convinced that the escape from every prison must be there where the light shines clearest. To them glass is a mystery which they have never met with in nature; they cannot understand why they are unable to pass through it, and convinced that there must be a way, they persevere to the end; in fact, it is because of their intelligence that they make these unhappy efforts to discover the secret. The feather-brained flies, on the other hand, to whom the mystery of glass means nothing and who possess no power of thought whatever, merely flutter wildly hither and thither, and end by rushing against the friendly opening that sets them free.