156 BRITISH BEES. 



fabricated of a coarser material than those within the 

 hive, and wherein also the several compartments form a 

 more homogeneous unity, and the uniformity of the 

 several layers or floors is more in accordance with archi- 

 tectural symmetry, — yet must the palm of precedence 

 be accorded to the bee, from the more elaborate and per- 

 fect development of the social instinctive faculty. 



We may be the more excused for this preference 

 when we weigh the interest of the genus Apis to man. 

 The wasp boots us nothing, but is the pilferer of our 

 fruits, and a marauder upon the hive, whose inhabitants 

 it destroys and consumes their produce, it being in- 

 different to them which they obtain — the bee or the 

 honey, — either furnishing them with sustenance. The 

 ant is obtrusive and incommodious, making incursions 

 upon the pantry, the store-room, the green-house, and 

 the hot-house; disfiguring our flower-beds, and often 

 disgusting us with our aliment by the impertinent in- 

 trusion of its appearance. But the bee stores up for us 

 honey, whose cruses are as inexhaustible as the oil cruse 

 of the good widow of Zarephath, and whose waxen shards 

 furnish us with a beautifully soft light, which in Ca- 

 tholic worship adds solemnity to the rites of religion. 

 In doing this the bee fulfils a sovereign function in the 

 economy of nature, by the fertilization of the flower- 

 ing plants, with which she reciprocates benefits; the 

 preponderance, however, is importantly in favour of the 

 flower. 



If captious objectors should dispute the position we 

 thus claim for the bees, we will willingly leave them the 

 wasp with its sting, whilst we sedulously cultivate the 

 active and industrious bee, whose associations range 

 through all the fields of poetry, but nowhere more lusci- 



