THE BEES POSITION IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE BEES' POSITION IN THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 



All natural objects belong to one of three great divisions — mineral, 

 vegetable, or animal. In classifying any object of nature, the first 

 thing is to find to which of these kingdoms it belongs. These 

 kingdoms are cut up into groups, and are divided and subdivided 

 for the better understanding of the group or division any member 

 of either kingdom may occupy. 



Nature is very fond of diversity. She has been very lavishing 

 in the distribution of her infinite resources in all three kingdoms. 

 in the animal world alone she has spread out before us nearly half 

 a million classes of creatures endowed with life which inhabit land or 

 sea. To better understand this vast army, of which the honey-bee is 

 a member, ,each one is marshalled under eight or nine different heads. 

 This splitting up is for the purpose of narrowing down or limiting 

 any one of them to a known position in the kingdom to which they 

 belong, so that in speaking, reading, or writing of them the mean- 

 ing will be the more intelligible and comprehensive. Thus, a bee 

 is as much an animal as a horse, cow, or fish, but in their classifica- 

 tion there are many grades between them. A horse resembles 

 a fish far more than it does a bee. The horse and fish have internal 

 .skeletons and backbones (vertebrata), but the honey-bee has 

 neither. Again, the honey-bee resembles a spider, crab, or earth- 

 worm more than it does a horse or fish, but there is a very wide 

 difference between a bee and the first three named. A bee is like 

 a spider or worm in that none of them have an internal skeleton or 

 framework of bones. The framework of bees, spiders, worms, &c., 

 are of the same construction, i.e., made up of external rings. 

 Animals whose bodies are made up of external horny rings are 

 termed Anmdosa. The organs of locomotion in spiders, worms, 

 &c., have feet. Bees, also, although they fly, walk upon feet. But 

 the feet of a bee differ very much from those of a worm. There 

 are joints in the feet of spiders and bees, but there are none in those 

 of worms. Animals, the framework of whose bodies are composed 

 of horny rings and have jointed feet, belong to that division of the 

 .animal kingdom termed Arf/iropoda. 



Bees have jointed feet, and are, therefore, separated from 



