The Progress of the Race 
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 per- 
fect form. Are these movements defi- 
nitely, and for all time, arrested in each 
one of these species, and does the con- 
necting-line exist in our imagination alone? 
Let us not be too eager to establish a sys- 
tem in this ill-explored region. Let our 
conclusions be only provisional, and prefer- 
entially such as convey the utmost hope; 
1 Tt is not certain that the principle of unique 
royalty, or maternity, is strictly observed among the 
Meliponitz. Blanchard remarks very justly, that as 
they possess no sting and are consequently less readily 
able than the mothers 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 that 
exists between queens and workers, as also to the im- 
possibility of rearing the Meliponite in our climate. 
403 
