THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE 221 



But the republic is less strong, general life less assured^ 

 prosperity more limited, than with our bees ; and wherever 

 these are introduced, the Meliponitag tend to disappear before 

 them. In both races the fraternal idea has undergone equal 

 and magnificent development, save in one point alone, wherein 

 it achieves no further advance among the Meliponitce than 

 among the limited offspring of the humble-bees. In the 

 mechanical organisation of distributed labour, in the precise 

 economy of effort — briefly, in the architecture of the city, 

 they display manifest inferiority. As to this, I need only 

 refer to what I have said in section 42 of this book, while 

 adding that, whereas in the hives of our Apitae all the cells 

 are equally available for the rearing of the brood and the 

 storage of provisions, and endure as long as the city itself, 

 they serve only one of these purposes among the Meliponitee ; 

 and the cells employed as cradles for the nymphs are destroyed 

 after these have been hatched.^ It is in our domestic bees, 

 therefore, that the idea, of whose movements we have given a 

 cursory and incomplete picture, attains its most perfect form. 

 Are these movements definitely, and for all time, arrested in 

 each one of these species, and does the connecting-line exist 

 in our imagination alone ? Let us not be too eager to establish 

 a system in this ill-explored region. Let our conclusions be 

 only provisional, and preferentially such as convey the utmost 

 hope ; for, were a choice forced upon us, occasional gleams 



1 It is not certain that the principle of unique royalty or maternity is strictly obsei-ved 

 among the Meliponitas. Blanchard very justly remarks that as they possess no sting, 

 and are consequently less readily able than the workers of our own bees to kill 

 each other, several queens will probably live together in the same hive. But certainty 

 on this point has hitherto been unattainable, owing to the great resemblance existing 

 between queens and workers, as also to the impossibility of rearing the Meliponitce in 

 our climate. 



