BOMBUS, THE HUMBLE-BEE 69 



is less ordered, less specialised, and is carried on 

 more on the lines of the comfortable city firms 

 of a century ago and less on the lines of an up- 

 to-date trust or syndicate. Few trusts or syn* 

 dicates awake our deeper affections, and, as 

 Bagehot said about Political Economists, " No 

 one really mourns when they die." 



Humble-bees are dwellers in cool or, at any 

 rate, temperate climates. Perhaps they flourish 

 best about our latitude, but they are found far 

 north passing the seventeenth parallel, and their 

 comfortable and homely booming is a welcome, 

 if unexpected, note in the monotonous wastes 

 of Greenland, Siberia and Alaska. But few 

 species occur in the Tropics, though they are 

 found high up in the Himalayas. Africa does 

 not know them except along the Mediterranean 

 Coast, and, until introduced into New Zealand, 

 they were absent from Australasia. 



Altogether there are some hundred species of 

 Bombus'\viih a very large number of varieties or 

 sub-species. Of these, seventeen species occur in 

 our islands. The genus Bombus differ from other 

 bees in many particulars, but two of the most 

 striking are manifestly well adapted for life in cold 

 regions ; the body is short and stout and the 



