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1859
1860
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1866
1869
1872

Compare with:
1859
1860
1861
1866
1869

flat bases; 1872
flat bottoms; 1859 1860 1861 1866
bottoms with flat sides; 1869

some parts, only small portions, 1869 1872
parts, only little bits, 1859 1860 1861 1866

in circularly gnawing away and deepening the basins on both 1869 1872
on the opposite 1859 1860 1861 1866

OMIT 1869 1872
as they circularly gnawed away and deepened the basins on both sides, 1859 1860 1866
as they circularly gnawed away and deep- ened the basins on both sides, 1861

thus succeeded in 1869 1872
succeeded in thus 1859 1860 1861 1866

on opposite sides 1869 1872
in the opposed cells 1859 1860 1861 1866

wax, a thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, coloured with vermilion. The bees instantly began on both sides to excavate little basins near to each other, in the same way as before; but the ridge of wax was so thin, that the bottoms of the basins, if they had been excavated to the same depth as in the former
experi- ment,
experiment,
would have broken into each other from the opposite sides. The bees, however, did not suffer this to happen, and they stopped their excavations in due time; so that the basins, as soon as they had been a little deepened, came to have flat bases; and these flat
bottoms,
sides,
bases,
formed by
little thin
thin little
plates of the vermilion wax
having been
....
left ungnawed, were situated, as far as the eye could judge, exactly along the planes of imaginary intersection between the basins on the opposite sides of the ridge of wax. In some parts, only small portions, in other parts, large portions of a rhombic plate
had been
were thus
left between the opposed basins, but the work, from the unnatural state of things, had not been neatly performed. The bees must have worked at very nearly the same rate in circularly gnawing away and deepening the basins on both sides of the ridge of vermilion wax, OMIT in order to have thus succeeded in leaving flat plates between the basins, by stopping work
along
at
the
intermediate
....
planes
or planes
....
of intersection.
Considering how flexible thin wax is, I do not see that there is any difficulty in the bees, whilst at work on the two sides of a strip of wax, perceiving when they have gnawed the wax away to the proper thinness, and then stopping their work. In ordinary combs it has appeared to me that the bees do not always succeed in working at exactly the same rate from the opposite sides; for I have noticed half-completed rhombs at the base of a just-commenced cell, which were slightly concave on one side, where I suppose that the bees had excavated too quickly, and convex on the opposed
side,
side
where the bees had worked less quickly. In one
well-marked
wellmarked
well marked
instance, I put the comb back into the hive, and allowed the bees to go on working for a short time, and again examined the cell, and I found that the rhombic plate had been completed, and had become perfectly
flat :
flat:
it was absolutely impossible, from the extreme thinness of the little
rhombic
....
plate, that they could have effected this by gnawing away the convex side; and I suspect that the bees in such cases stand on opposite sides and push and bend the ductile and warm wax (which as I have tried is easily done) into its proper intermediate plane, and thus flatten it.
From the experiment of the ridge of vermilion
wax,
wax
we can
clearly
....
see
that
that,
if the bees were to build for themselves a thin wall of wax, they could make their cells of the proper shape, by standing at the proper distance from each other, by excavating at the same