8 BRITISH BEES. 



their then existing inhabitants restricted to the circuit 

 they now occupy. That long periods of time must 

 necessarily have elapsed to have effected this by the 

 methods we still see in operation, is no proof that it has 

 not been. Nature, in her large operations, has no 

 regard for the duration of time. Her courses are so 

 sure that they are ever eventually successful ; for, as to 

 her, whose permanency is not computable, it matters not 

 what period the process takes ; and she is as indifferent 

 to the seconds of time whereby man's brevity is spanned, 

 as she is to the wastefulness of her own exuberant re- 

 sources, knowing that neither is lost to the result at 

 which she reaches. Consuming the one, and scattering 

 broadcast the other, but in unnoticeable infinitesimals, 

 she does it irrespective of the origin, the needs, or the 

 duration of man, who can only watch her irrepressible 

 advances by transmitting from generation to generation 

 the record of his observations ; marking thus by imagi- 

 nary stations the course of the incessant stream which 

 carries him upon its surface. 



That other bees are found besides the social bees, may 

 be new to some of my readers, who will perhaps now 

 learn, for the first time, that collective similarities of 

 organization and habits associate other insects with 

 "the bee" as bees. Although the names "domestic 

 bee," '"honey bee," or "social bee," imply a contra- 

 distinction to some other " bee," yet it must have been 

 very long before even the most acute observers could 

 have noticed the peculiarities of structure which consti- 

 tute other insects "bees," and ally the "wild bees" to 

 the "domestic bee," from the deficiency of artificial 

 means to examine minutely the organization whereby the 

 affinity is clearly proved. This is also further shown in 



