This preamble of Uncle Paul’s, defining the three industrial classes of the bees, appeared to interest the children greatly, and they were surprised to find that insects have such marvelously elaborate social laws. At the very first opportunity Jules began questioning his uncle. The impatient child wanted to know everything at once. “You say the wax-bees make wax. I thought they found it ready-made in flowers.” “They do not find it ready-made. They make it, sweat it, that is the word, as the oyster sweats the stone of his shell, as the meleagrina sweats the substance of its mother-of-pearl and its pearls. “If you look closely at a bee’s stomach, you will see it is composed of several pieces or rings fitting into each other. The stomach of all insects has, moreover, the same formation. This arrangement of several parts fitted endwise is found in the horns or antennæ, as well as in the legs, of all insects without exception. It is precisely to this division into separate pieces fitted endwise that the word insect alludes, its meaning being _cut in pieces_. Is not the body of an insect composed, in fact, of a series of pieces placed end to end? “Let us come back to the bee’s stomach. In the fold separating one ring from the next there is found, underneath, in the middle of the stomach, the wax-producing mechanism. There, little by little, the waxy matter oozes out, just as with us sweat oozes through the skin. This matter accumulates in a thin layer which the insect detaches by rubbing the stomach with its legs. There are eight of these wax-producers. When one is idle, another is working; so that the bee always has some layer of wax at its disposal.” “And what does the bee do with its wax?” “It builds cells, that is to say storehouses, where the honey is preserved, and little rooms where the young bees in the form of larvæ are raised.” “It builds its house, then,” put in Emile, “with the layers of wax taken from the folds of its stomach. And there, you see, the bee shows a very original and inventive mind. It is as if, in order to build a house, we should rub our sides so as to get from them the blocks of cut stone we needed.” “The snail,” concluded Uncle Paul, “has already accustomed us to these original ideas of animals. It sweats the stone for its shell.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER LXXVIII THE CELLS “IN order to store the supply of honey and lodge the larvæ, the bees build with their wax little rooms called cells, open at one end and closed at the other. They are six-sided and arranged with perfect regularity. In geometrical terms, each would be called a hexagonal prism, or a prism with six facets.