WILD BEES 41 



with this change of habits in the bee family 

 must be left to the imagination. Nearly till the 

 endless variety of flowers with their perfumes and 

 colours as we know them have since been evolved, 

 as well as most of the beautiful arrangements for 

 bee-fertihzation upon which thousands of species 

 of plants are dependent for their existence. Truly 

 very small causes sometimes have prodigious results ! 

 How many people know or realize that much of 

 the variety in plants, most of the colours in our 

 gardens, many of the perfumes on our toilet tables, 

 much of the beauty in many of our canvases, a good 

 deal of the poetry in our language, and even a con- 

 siderable development of the beauty sense in our- 

 selves, result from that rather vulgar historical 

 incident dated an aeon or two back, when the young 

 of the bee family left off a taste for butchers' meat 

 and took to vegetarianism ! 



Lord Avebury puts forward on behalf of the ants 

 what he calls a fair claim to rank next to man in 

 the scale of intelligence, if they are to be judged by 

 their social organizations, their architectural abihties, 

 and their relations to other animals. Their relations 

 the bees are, however, scarcely less interesting, and 

 most of their wonderful habits must have been 

 developed since they acquired their social instincts, 

 since to the acquirement and development of these 

 most of their importance is due. For this reason 

 the present condition and habits of the humble 

 bees are of special interest, for here we have, as 

 it were, the starting point where we may see the 

 community just in process of development, the 

 social ties which hold it together being as yet of 

 the loosest. 



