Mr. Hunter's Observations on Bees. 129 
instruction, heavy and disagreeable ; the more so too, if the 
parts are small, where the sense can only take them in 
singly, and the mind can hardly comprehend the whole, or 
apply all the parts combined to any consequent action. This 
has been too much the case with Swammerdam ; he often at- 
tempted too much accuracy in his description of minute things. 
But the natural history of insects has not been sufficiently un- 
derstood at large, so as to throw light on this subject where 
there was an analogy, and where, without such analogy, it 
must appear in the bee alone unintelligible, from the obscurity 
attending some parts of their ceconomy ; for there is hardly 
any species of animals but what has some of its oeconomy ob- 
scure ; and probably this is as much so in this insect, as in any 
other class of animals we are at one season of the year almost 
daily seeing ; yet these parts of the oeconomy may be evident in 
some other species of the same tribe or genus, and thus be 
cleared up, from analogy, so that the species assist each other 
in their demonstration. This is evident in the whole tribe of 
flying insects, for what is lost, or cannot be made out in the 
one, may be demonstrated in another : and we find there are 
some things in the oeconomy of the bee that cannot be seen 
or demonstrated in it alone, but which are evident in some 
other insects ; and while they possess the same parts, and 
other circumstances are similar, we must conclude the uses of 
those parts are similar in both ; for whenever a circumstance in 
one animal cannot be found out in that animal, but can in an- 
other, then the natural conclusion is, that the uses are similar 
in both. 
Though the bee may be classed in some degree among 
the domestic animals, yet from there being such a cluster 
mdccxcii. S 
