The boy was a resident in Selborne, about the year 1750. He took great notice of bees from his childhood, and at length used to eat them. In summer, his few faculties were devoted to the pursuit of them, through fields and gardens. During winter, his father's chimney corner was his favourite haunt, where he dozed away his time, in an almost torpid state. Practice made him so expert, that he could seize honey-bees, humble-bees or wasps, with his naked hands, disarm them of their stings, and suck their honey-bags, with perfect impunity. Sometimes he would store the bees in bottles, and even in his shirt bosom. He was the terror of the surrounding bee-keepers, whose gardens he would enter by stealth, and rapping on the outsides of their hives, catch the bees as they came out to see what was the matter. If in this way he could not obtain a sufficient number to supply his wants, so passionately fond was he of honey, that he would sometimes overturn the hives to get at it. He was accustomed to hover about the tubs of the mead-makers, to beg a draught of bee-wine, as he called it. As he ran about the fields he made a humming noise with his lips, resembling that of bees. The lad was lean in his person, and of a cadaverous unhealthy aspect: he died before he reached the age of maturity. CHAPTER XXXIV. ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF BEES. "Quel abime aux yeux du sage qu'une ruche d'abeilles? Quel sagesse profonde se cache dans cet abime! Quel philosophe osera le fonder!"--+Bonnet.+ The combs of a bee-hive comprise a congeries of hexagonal cells, formed by the bees, as receptacles for honey or for embryo bees. A honey-comb is allowed to be one of the most striking achievements of insect industry, and an admirable specimen of insect architecture. It has attracted the admiration of the contemplative philosopher in all ages, and awakened speculation not only in the naturalist, but also in the mathematician: so regular, so perfect, is the structure of the cells, that it satisfies every condition of a refined problem in geometry. Still a review of their proceedings will lead to the conclusion, as +Huber+ has observed, that "the geometrical relations, which apparently embellish the productions of bees, are rather the necessary result of their mode of proceeding, than the principle by which their labour is guided." "We must therefore conclude, that the bees, although they act geometrically, understand neither the rules nor the principles of the arts which they practise so skilfully, and that the geometry is not in the bee, but in the great Geometrician who made the bee, and made all things in number, weight and measure[Z]." [Footnote Z: Reid.]