Now, the form of the hive that man offers to the bee knows infinite variety, from the hollow tree or earthenware vessel still obtaining in Asia and Africa, and the familiar bell-shaped constructions of straw which we find in our farmers' kitchen-gardens or beneath their windows, lost beneath masses of sunflowers, phlox, and hollyhock, to what may really be termed the factory of the model apiarist of today. An edifice, this, that can contain more than three hundred pounds of honey, in three or four stories of superposed combs enclosed in a frame which permits of their being removed and handled, of the harvest being extracted through centrifugal force by means of a turbine, and of their being then restored to their place like a book in a well-ordered library. And one fine day the industry or caprice of man will install a docile swarm in one of these disconcerting abodes. And there the little insect is expected to learn its bearings, to find its way, to establish its home; to modify the seemingly unchangeable plans dictated by the nature of things. In this unfamiliar place it is required to determine the site of the winter storehouses, that must not extend beyond the zone of heat that issues from the half-numbed inhabitants; it must divine the exact point where the brood-cells shall concentrate, under penalty of disaster should these be too high or too low, too near to or far from the door. The swarm, it may be, has just left the trunk of a fallen tree, containing one long, narrow, depressed, horizontal gallery; and it finds itself now in a tower-shaped edifice, whose roof is lost in gloom. Or, to take a case that is more usual, perhaps, and one that will give some idea of the surprise habitually in store for the bees: after having lived for centuries past beneath the straw dome of our village hives, they are suddenly transplanted to a species of mighty cupboard, or chest, three or four times as large as the place of their birth; and installed in the midst of a confused scaffolding of superposed frames, some running parallel to the entrance and some perpendicular; the whole forming a bewildering network that obscures the surfaces of their dwelling.