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The Nuptial Flight

to equalise, or allot more methodically, the share he attributes to the universe and to himself.

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Let us return to the tragic nuptials of the queen. Here it is evidently nature's wish, in the interests of crossed fertilisation, that the union of the drone and the queen-bee should be possible only in the open sky. But her desires blend network-fashion, and her most valued laws have to pass through the meshes of other laws, which, in their turn, the moment after, are compelled to pass through the first.

In the sky she has planted so many dangers—cold winds, storm-currents, birds, insects, drops of water, all of which also obey invincible laws—that she must of necessity arrange for this union to be as brief as possible. It is so, thanks to the startlingly sudden death of the male.

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