Before the time of +Huber+, no naturalist had seen the commencement of the comb, nor traced the several steps of its progress. After many attempts, he at length succeeded in attaining the desired object, by preventing the bees from forming their usual impenetrable curtain, by suspending themselves from the top of the hive; in short, he obliged them to build upwards, and was thereby enabled, by means of a glass window, to watch every variation and progressive step in the construction of comb. _Each comb in a hive is composed of two ranges of cells backed against each other: these cells_, looking at them as a whole, may be said to _have one common base_, though no one cell is opposed directly to another. This base or partition between the double row of cells is so disposed as to form a pyramidal cavity at the bottom of each, as will be explained presently. _The mouths of the cells_, thus ranged on each side of a comb, _open into two parallel streets_ (there being a continued series of combs in every well filled hive). These streets are sufficiently contracted to avoid waste of room and to preserve a proper warmth, yet _wide enough to allow the passage of two bees abreast_. Apertures through different parts of the combs are reserved to form near roads, for crossing from street to street, whereby much time is saved to the bees. "These in firm phalanx ply their twinkling feet, Stretch out the ductile mass, and form the street, with many a cross-way path and postern gate. That shorten to their range the spreading state." +Evans.+ _The bees_, as has been already observed, _build their cells of an hexangular form, having six equal sides_, with the exception of the first or uppermost row, the shape of which is an irregular pentagon, the roof of the hive forming one of the members of the pentagon, thus: [Illustration] "There are only three possible figures of the cells," says +Dr. Reid+, "which can make them all equal and similar, without any useless interstices. These are the equilateral triangle, the square and the regular hexagon. It is well known to mathematicians that there is not a fourth way possible, in which a plane maybe cut into little spaces that shall be equal, similar, and regular, without leaving any interstices." Of these three geometrical figures, the hexagon most completely unites the prime requisites for insect architecture. The truth of this proposition was perceived by +Pappus+, an eminent Greek philosopher and mathematician, who lived at Alexandria in the reign of Theodosius the Great, and its adoption by bees in the construction of honey-comb was noticed by that ancient geometrician. These requisites are;