The Life of the Bee
of the vastest and most magnificent brain of the hive: the most beautiful and complex, the most perfect, that, in another order and with a different organisation, is to be found in nature after that of man. Here again, as in every quarter where the scheme of the world is known to us, there where the brain is, are authority and victory, veritable strength and wisdom. And here again it is an almost invisible atom of this mysterious substance that organises and subjugates matter, and is able to create its own little triumphant and permanent place in the midst of the stupendous, inert forces of nothingness and death.[1]
- ↑ The brain of the bee, according to the calculation of Dujardin, constitutes the 1–174th part of the insect's weight, and that of the ant the 1–296th. On the other hand the peduncular parts, whose development usually keeps pace with the triumphs the intellect achieves over instinct, are somewhat less important in the bee than in the ant. It would seem
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