The Foundation of the City
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
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