2 THE BEE-KEEPER’S MANUAL. 
species under the name of Apis fusciata; but both 
it, and the six or eight other kinds occasionally 
spoken of, are at present little more than curiosities 
of the fancier, The Italian, on the contrary, is 
now cultivated in nearly every apiary, and we shall 
therefore make further mention of it in a sub- 
sequent section; giving also the briefest possible 
notice of such of the others as have at present fallen 
under our observation. 
The limits to which a bee-keeper’s manual of 
practice is necessarily confined, permit only the 
remark that these extraordinary insects are, as to 
origin and history, lost in the mists of a remote 
antiquity. We know, however, that they, their habits 
and productions, are alluded to in Scripture, and 
attracted marked attention and admiration in the 
early eastern communities, where doubtless was 
familiar their characteristic Oriental name, Deburah— 
“she that speaketh.” Subsequently the bee has 
spread itself, or been carried, in spite of clime and 
temperature, over a large portion of the old 
continents; following in the wake of civilised man 
wherever he has placed his foot in the primeval 
forests of the new world; and later on, in our own 
time, has been received as a friend and benefactor in 
the boundless regions of Australasia and the islands of 
the Pacific Ocean. From the time of Aristotle down 
to our own day, treatises on bees have ever been 
popular, and the curious naturalist has no difficulty in 
collecting a library relative to a subject apparently 
inexhaustible. But space allows us to notice neither 
the crude speculations to be met with in ancient 
