The Progress of the Race 



nymphs are destroyed after these have 

 been hatched.^ It is in our domestic 

 bees, therefore, that the idea, of whose 

 movements we have given a cursory and 

 incomplete picture, attains its most per- 

 fect form. Are these movements defi- 

 nitely, and for all time, arrested in each 

 one of these species, and does the con- 

 necting-line exist in our imagination alone? 

 Let us not be too eager to establish a sys- 

 tem in this ill-explored region. Let our 

 conclusions be only provisional, and prefer- 

 entially such as convey the utmost hope ; 



^ It is not certain that the principle of unique 

 royalty, or maternity, is strictly observed among the 

 Meliponitje. Blanchard remarks very justly, that as 

 they possess no sting and are consequently less readily 

 able than the mothers of our own bees to kill each 

 other, several queens will probably live together in 

 the same hive. But certainty on this point has hitherto 

 been unattainable owing to the great resemblance that 

 exists between queens and workers, as also to the im- 

 possibility of rearing the Meliponitae in our climate. 

 403 



