The Resin-bees 



makes good the Inadequacy of the implement. 

 To go no further, have we not just seen dif- 

 ferent artisans collecting and using pitch, 

 some with spoons, others with rakes, others 

 again with pincers? Therefore, with such 

 equipment as it possesses, the insect would be 

 capable of abandoning cotton for leaves, 

 leaves for resin, resin for mortar, if some pre- 

 disposition of talent did not make it keep to 

 its speciality. 



These few lines, which are the outcome not 

 of a heedless pen, but of mature reflection, 

 will set people talking of abominable para- 

 doxes. We will let them talk and we will sub- 

 mit the folowing proposition to our ad- 

 versaries: take an entomologist of the high- 

 est merit, a Latreille,^ for instance, versed in 

 all the details of the structure of insects but 

 utterly unacquainted with their habits. He 

 knows the dead insect better than anybody, 

 but he has never occupied himself with the 

 living insect. As a classifier, he is beyond 

 compare; and that is all. We ask him to ex- 

 amine a Bee, the first that comes to hand, and 



'Pierre Andre Latrelllc (1762-1833), one of the 

 founders of modern entomological science. — Translator's 

 Note. 



335 



