PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 7 



intimate how very early, even in the present condition 

 of the earth, bees were beneficial to mankind, and that, 

 therefore, the connection may have subsisted, as I have 

 previously urged, in the remotest and very primitive 

 ages of the existence of man ; and that imperatively with 

 them, the entire family of which they form a unit only, 

 was also created. 



In America, where Apis meUifica is of European in- 

 troduction, swarms of this bee, escaping domestication, 

 resume their natural condition, and have pressed forward 

 far into the uncleared wild ; and widely in advance of 

 the conquering colonist, they have taken their abode in 

 the primitive, unreclaimed forest. Nor do they remain 

 stationary, but on, still on, with every successive year, 

 spreading in every direction ; and thus surely indicating 

 to the aboriginal red-man the certain, if even slow, ap- 

 proach of civilization, and the consequent necessity of 

 his own protective retreat : a strong instance of the dis- 

 tributive processes of nature. It clearly shows how the 

 wild bees may have similarly migrated in all directions 

 from the centre of their origin. That they are now 

 found at the very ultima Thule, so far away from their 

 assumed incunabula, and with such apparent existing 

 obstructions to their distributive progress, is a proof, had 

 we no other, that the condition of the earth must have 

 been geographically very different at the period of their 

 beginning, and that vast geological changes have, since 

 then, altered its physical features. Where islands now 

 exist, these must then have formed portions of widely 

 sweeping continents; and seas have been dry land, which 

 have since swept over the same area, insulating irregular 

 portions by the submergence of irregular intervals, and 

 thus have left them in their present condition, with 



