Freeman's Life of Kirby. 3543 



" My friend was very uneasy about his hapless galligaskins, fearing 

 it to be impossible to restore them to their former hue ; my fears were 

 excited by the prospect of a very high bed, and I expect to be lost in 

 a gulph of down, but was agreeably surprised ; the feather bed was 

 firm, but not knotty. I did not wake until about 8, and when I open- 

 ed my eyes and sat up in bed, behold my poor fellow traveller, between 

 hope and despair, bestowing his whole might in cleaning his leathers; 

 at length he succeeds, and they are once more decent, at which his 

 countenance resumes his wonted cheerfulness ; he rises, and we de- 

 scend into our parlour, where a new difficulty awaits us, ■ — our boots 

 were so wet we find more difficulty to get them on than to slip them 

 off: at last, however, without rent or rupture, they resume their des- 

 tined station upon our legs, and we walk into the town to take a sur- 

 vey.' — P. 96. 



But really we must proceed to something more entomological than 

 even this entomological excursion. The readers of the 'Zoologist' 

 are too well acquainted with the ' Monographia Apum,' to need any 

 information about that extraordinary work, of which it may truly be 

 said, that at the time it was published it was without a parallel for di- 

 ligent research and careful pains-taking: that it contains many errors; 

 that the sexes of bees, differing widely as they do, were often mista- 

 ken for species, was almost a matter of necessity at a time when we 

 stood, as it were, on the very threshold of inquiry ; but the plainness 

 and clearness of the descriptions, and above all the masterly anatomi- 

 cal details of the cibarian organs, place the author in the very first rank 

 of entomological investigators, and leave very little for the future la- 

 bourer in the same field to achieve. Mr. F. Smith, who has paid such 

 1 unremitting attention to the economy and specific distinctions of Bri- 

 tish bees, has been able to associate the sexes and varieties with more 

 unerring certainty, and the science of Entomology is deeply indebted 

 to him for the extent and value of his labours ; but in structural de- 

 tail, in those characters which separate modern genera, he has, with 

 all his tact and acumen, added little to the precise details which the 

 illustrious Kirby gave us fifty years ago. 



It is a most interesting fact connected with the 'Monographia Apum 

 Angliae,' that Latreille, then the first entomologist of the Continent, 

 was working on the same subject, at the same time, and exactly in the 

 same way as its author; and yet, owing to the deadly strife then raging 

 between England and France, the labours of the two entomologists 

 were totally unknown to each other. Latreille's results appeared in 

 one of the supplementary memoirs appended to the 'Histoire Naturelle 



