London Insects. 151 



The most familiar and pleasantest of the Hymen- 

 optera are Ants and Bees, of neither of which we have 

 any want in London. 



Honey Bees, chiefly the Ligurian kind, which are 

 said to be better tempered than the common hardier 

 Black Bees, are kept by several people in the heart 

 of the town, and if fed occasionally in the winter do 

 fairly well. But besides stray members of such 

 hives, we have a fair share of the 250 or more wild 

 sorts known in England, and may watch them at our 

 leisure, of every degree of size and activity, from 

 clumsy " bumblers," which seem never quite sure 

 how to use their wings, and well content if they can 

 blunder home somehow without banging themselves 

 against a tree, to spiritual little Bees which hang for a 

 minute or two at a time, like humming birds, to all 

 appearance motionless over a flower, to vanish with a 

 saucy whisk and appear again the next moment as 

 still as before over another flower. 



On a Saturday morning in July, 1885, an assistant 

 in Messrs. Mappin and Webb's shop, while crossing 

 the pavement in Regent Street, found himself 

 suddenly covered from head to waist by a swarm of 

 bees. Fortunately he had presence of mind and 

 kept still until, with the help of sympathetic by- 

 standers, coat and hat were taken off when, as 

 suddenly as it had come, the swarm rose and left him 

 with no hurt more serious than a couple of stings on 

 the neck. 



Shakespeare, not very appropriately, puts into the 

 mouth of Henry the Fifth of England, the usurper's 

 son, his description of the Bees which teach 



" The art of order to a peopled kingdom." 

 The story of their merchants, magistrates, soldiers, 



