40 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



^ofi^ofi, an imitative word — has reference to the 

 booming sound made by the insect in flying. 



The bee family has an interesting history. 

 It is in all probability descended from certain 

 solitary wasps which, like an existing species, were 

 in the habit of providing living animal food for the 

 young larvae. Like a family of solitary wasps of 

 the present day, they probably possessed the power 

 of stinging their animal prey so as to paralyse with- 

 out kilUng it, laying an egg beside this living store of 

 food, and leaving it to be the prey of the resulting 

 larva. The first step upwards was the abandonment 

 of this habit, the more enlightened individuals taking 

 to feeding the young with food disgorged from their 

 own stomachs, the perfect insect feeding on honey 

 or pollen. Hermann Miiller states that the new 

 race at first differed only in this habit, but in course 

 of time, filling an unoccupied place in nature, it 

 increased enormously, and at last formed the widely 

 ramified family of bees as we have come to know it. 

 The steps in the development of the family have 

 been marked by the gradual elongation of the 

 tongue and the adaptation of the mouth parts to 

 honey-collecting habits, the acquisition and perfect- 

 ing of pollen-collecting appendages, and the develop- 

 ment of social instincts in some species. The steps 

 may still be traced through surviving types, and 

 Miiller has sketched the development upward 

 through the species of Prosopis, which differ little 

 from many sand-wasps, Sphecodes, Halidus, Andrena, 

 until the Bombus or humble bee family is reached, 

 this being the nearest ally to the hive bee, in which 

 the series culminates. The resulting changes which 

 have taken place elsewhere in nature pari passu 



