“Supposing,” said he, in effect, “you were required to close the end of an hexagonal vessel by three rhombs or diamond-shaped plates, what angles must be given to these rhombs so that the greatest amount of space would be enclosed by the least amount of material?” It was a difficult problem, but the mathematician worked it out at last, and his answer was “109° 26′ and 70° 34.” Now, the difference between the calculation of the man and the calculation of the bee was an exceedingly small one. No one thought of calling into question the work of the man, who was pre-eminent in his world of figures. It was therefore accepted as a fact that the bee had made a trifling mistake—so trifling, however, that, in the matter of comb-building, it was of no importance. Her reputation was unimpaired: to all intents and purposes the honey-cell was still a perfect example of utmost capacity secured by least material. But another mathematician—a Scotsman this time—went over the whole business again, and he proved conclusively that the bee was right, while the first mathematician was wrong. He showed that the true answer to the problem of the angles was 109° 28′ and 70° 32′—identically the figures obtained by estimation of the honey-comb. * * * * * In the foregoing pages the principles involved in the construction of honey-comb have been gone into rather minutely, because it is here that the lines of thought between the old and the new naturalists seem to make a typical divergence. Both schools are, in the main, agreed on the point that all forms of life emanate from the one omnipotent source; and it matters little whether we speak of the vast periods of time, during which the creation of all things was effected, as ages, or under the old Biblical metaphor of days. But whereas the old school appears to insist on different qualities of life—immortal soul in man, and a mystic, subconscious, perishable thing called instinct in the brute creation—the new school is unable to see any distinction between the intellectual equipment of man and brute, but that of degree. Between the honey-bee and her masters there is indeed a great gulf fixed, but it is conceivably not unbridgable. And unless we are determined at all cost of logical violence to force a favourite set of square opinions into the round holes of observed fact, it is difficult to see how the old position is long to remain tenable.