PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 
11 
in confirmation of which I may here briefly notice in 
anticipation, that the bees are divided into two large 
groups,—the short-tongued and the long-tongued,— 
and it is the short-tongued,—some of the Andrenid (£>— 
which are the first abroad ; the corollse of the first 
flowers being shallow and the nectar depositories obvious, 
an arrangement which facilitates their obtaining with 
facility the honey already at hand. These bees are also 
amply furnished,—as will be afterwards explained,—in the 
clothing of their posterior legs, or otherwise, with the 
means to convey home the pollen which they vigorously 
collect, finding it already in superfluous abundance, and 
which, being borne from flower to flower, impregnates and 
makes fruitful those plants which require external agents 
to accomplish their fertility. Thus nature duly provides, 
by an interchange of offices, for the general good, and 
by simple, although sometimes obscure means, gives 
motion and persistency to the wheel within wheel which 
so exquisitely fulfil her designs, and roll forward, unre¬ 
mittingly, her stupendous fabric. 
The way in which the bees execute this object and 
design of nature, and to which the3q more evidently than 
any other insects, are called to the performance, is shown 
in the implanted instinct which prompts them to seek 
flowers, knowing, by means of that instinct, that flowers 
will furnish them with what is needful both for their 
own sustenance, and for that of their descendants. 
Flowers, to this end, are furnished with the requisite 
attractive qualifications to allure the bees. Whether 
their odour or their colour be the tempting vehicle, or 
both conjunctively, it is scarcely possible to say, but 
that they should hold out special invitation is requisite 
to the maintenance of their own perpetuity. This, it is 
