FOREIGN BEES. 27& 



them by longer or shorter flights, according to the 

 greater or lesser distance of the object of pursuit. 

 If its followers lag behind., it returns with manifest 

 impatience, and by its redoubled cries appears to 

 chide their delay. As it approaches the tree, its 

 flights become more limited, its whistle is repeated 

 at shorter intervals, and at last, having brought its 

 associates to the desired spot, it hovers over it for a 

 moment, as if to mark it out distinctly, and then 

 quietly takes up a station at a little distance, wait- 

 ing the result, and expecting its share of the booty, 

 which it never fails to obtain. 



In the island of Madagascar, and the Mauritius, 

 is to be found the Apis Unicolor of Latreille, of a 

 bright shining black, without spots or coloured bands. 

 Its honey, as appears from a specimen brought home 

 by the master of a French vessel, is highly aromatic, 

 and is, while in the cells, or when recently abstracted, 

 of a green colour, but becomes afterwards of a red- 

 dish yellow. In these islands, the bee is domesti- 

 cated ; and a French Naturalist, M. de Lanux, has 

 published a memoir on the form of the Madagascar 

 hives a circumstance which naturally leads to the 

 supposition, that the inhabitants pay considerable at- 

 tention to the cultivation of this insect.* 



Knox, in his history of Ceylon, enumerates three 

 kinds of bees found in that island ; the first of which 

 bears a close resemblance to the European insect, 

 though, it would seem, by no means so irritable, and 

 which, like those near the Cape of Good Hope, builds 

 * Latreille, Obs. de Zool. au voyage de Humboldt. 



