GENERAL HISTORY OF BEES. 59 



either attracted by sound, or meeting it by accident, it 

 came across a fellow ; they plied their antennae together, 

 and the result was that both returned to their dead com- 

 panion, and dragged him away to their burrowing-place, 

 an extraordinary instance of intercommunication which 



> 



I can vouch for. 



It would be curious to know if the means of commu- 

 nication thus evidently possessed by animals, extends 

 beyond the social and gregarious tribes, and whether the 

 faculty undergoes any change through differences of 

 climate and locality, as man has done in the lapse of 

 time. For man, notwithstanding the vastly divergent 

 differences of race, may be obscurely tracked through 

 the dim trail of the affiliation of languages to one com- 

 mon origin. But the complete identity of habit through- 

 out the world of those genera which are native with us, 

 would seem to affirm that they are as closely allied in 

 every other particular, were we in a condition to make 

 the investigation, and whence we may conclusively 

 assume that they all had one central commencement. 



That this mode of communication, and this exercise 

 of the organ in the solitary tribes is limited to the 

 season of their amours is very probable, and I appre- 

 hend that it is not exercised between individuals of dis- 

 tinct species. But that, at that period, their action is 

 intensified may be presumed from the then greater acti- 

 vity of the males, who seem to have been called into 

 existence only to fulfil that great object of nature, and 

 which she associates invariably with gratification and 

 pleasure. Even in plants it may be observed to be at- 

 tended with something very analogous to animal enjoy- 

 ment in the peculiar development at that period of an 

 excessively energetic propulsion, which is the nearest 



