Buffon had a theory which has been revived once more, that the bees did not intend to make hexagonal cells, but rather round ones, and that owing to the crowding of the workers all around, the round ones became hexagonal. It is said also that crystals, fish-scales of certain kinds, soap-bubbles, etc., follow the same law, and Buffon advances this experiment to prove it. "Take a vessel and fill it full with peas or any other round grains, pour as much water upon them as will fill the spaces between them, close the vessel tightly, and boil the water. It will be found that the round peas have become six-sided. One sees clearly that this must be so from purely mechanical causes; each one of the round grains tends in the course of swelling as it boils to fill up the utmost space that it can, and by the extension and pressure of all alike they become hexagonal. Each bee wishes to occupy as much room as possible in its allotted space, therefore as the bodies of the bees are round or cylindrical, their cells become hexagonal because of the extension and pressure of all alike."
Here then we see reciprocal obstacles working a wonder, somewhat in the same way perhaps as the vices of men bring about a general virtue, so that the race odious, often so far as individuals are concerned, is tolerable in the mass. Broughman, Kirby, and Spence and others claim that the observations of soap-bubbles and peas prove nothing in this connection, for the effect of compression is only to produce irregular hexagonal forms, and does not explain the earlier form of the base of the cells.
To this one might rejoin that there are more ways than one of dealing with the blind law of necessity, for the wasp and the bumble-bee and many other species in similar circumstances and with the same end in view, arrive at very different, and manifestly inferior, results. Indeed it might be said further that even if the bee-cells did conform to the laws of crystallization as in the case of snow, or Buffon's soap-bubbles, or boiled peas, they show also in their general symmetry, in their well-determined angle of inclination, etc., that there are many other laws not followed by inert matter to which they also conform.