6 BRITISH BEES. 



many tropical forms of animal life, whose fossil remains 

 are found embedded in our soil, passed hither. By the 

 comparatively rapid intervention of geological changes, 

 some of the lower forms of life went no further than the 

 first land they reached, and are, consequently, not even 

 now to be found so far west as Ireland : the migration 

 appears clearly to have come from the East. Thus, 

 although we have no direct evidence of the presence of 

 " bees," yet as insects must have existed here, from the 

 certainty that the remains of insect-feeding reptiles are 

 found, as well as those of herbivorous animals, it may be 

 concluded that " bees" also abounded. 



Claiming thus this very high antiquity for man's 

 nutritive " bee," which was of far earlier utility to him 

 than the silkworm, whose labours demanded a very ad- 

 vanced condition of skill and civilization to be made 

 available; it is perfectly consistent, and indeed needful, 

 to claim the simultaneous existence of all the bee's 

 allies. The earliest Shemitic and Aryan records, the 

 Book of Job, the Vedas, Egyptian sculptures and pa- 

 pyri, as well as the poems of Homer, confirm the early 

 cultivation of bees by man for domestic uses ; and 

 their frequent representation in Egyptian hieroglyphics, 

 wherein the bee occurs as the symbol of royalty, clearly 

 shows that their economy, with a monarch at its head, 

 was known ; a hive, too, being figured, as Sir Gardner 

 Wilkinson tells us, upon a very ancient tomb at Thebes, is 

 early evidence of its domestication there, and how early, 

 even historically, it was brought under the special domi- 

 nion of mankind. To these particulars I shall have 

 occasion to refer more fully when the course of my nar- 

 rative brings me to treat of the geographical distribu- 

 tion of the "honey bee;" I adduce it now merely to 



