REVIEWS. 99 



gested, little busy bee, was lisped in artless rhyme, till such time as the 

 tomes of Reaumur, of Huber, or of Kirby, wiled us from repose, and 

 lighted up again the waning hours, then sent us forth, with the return of 

 day, in the fields and woodlands, to verify the more than fabulous wonders 

 and yet unexhausted secrets of your true history. Where the garden 

 blends gay colours and grateful scents in voluptuous profusion, there ye 

 are found ; in open forest glades, and deep-hollowed lanes, where the full 

 gush of concentrated sunshine reverberates from the wayside bank, search- 

 ing every nook and cranny, and flooding all with genial warmth and bril- 

 liance, there your countless dwellings are, populous cities of Troglodytes. 

 Free commoners of nature, yours, too, is the wide range of purple heather 

 mantling the mountain slope far above the track of the gleaming plough- 

 share, high aloft beyond the murky veil that wraps the clanking forges, 

 and the atmosphere of carking cares hanging about the marts of 

 human traffic ; where the skylark's song is silent and the chirrup of the 

 grasshopper, and no voice awakes the quivering ether but your glad hum, 

 unless it be the mellow tinkle of a sheep-bell, or the low gurgle of some 

 tiny brook, treading its way unseen among huge, moss-clad stones, or 

 that the distant boom of mighty ocean may come up, stealing faintly, 

 as a ghost of sound, upon the uncertain ear. We welcome you, 

 winged elves of the realm of flowers, and your historian, who comes to 

 tell us of your families and kin, to teach your proper names, particular 

 tastes and qualities. For, among bees, there are many shades and 

 diversities of instinct ; not all alike exemplify the character, moral and 

 poetical, that is conventionally attributed to the race at large. There are 

 domestic bees and wild, social and solitary, honey bees and parasites. 

 Man's wholesale pillage indeed is limited, in this country, to one species, 

 the highest in the scale of instinct and intelligence ; but many others bear 

 witness also to the poetical truth, that 



Vos non vobis mellificatis, apes. 



It is gratifying, however, to have such incontestable authority as Mr. 

 Smith has adduced, to clear the reputation of sundry families of bees 

 from the unmerited charge of setting up an establishment for self and 

 family, without working, at the cost of their more industrious neighbours. 

 Appearances indeed were against some of them, but our author teaches us 

 that appearances are deceitful : " Observation alone can be relied upon, 

 when the history of an insect is to be written ; all classification, based upon 

 structural differences alone, will frequently be at fault." On behalf of the 

 whole family Andrenidce the general plea is put in " not guilty." " The 



