8 
BRITISH BEES. 
their then existing inhabitants restricted to the circuit 
they now occupy. That long periods of time must 
necessarily have elapsed to have effected this by the 
methods we still see in operation, is no proof that it has 
not been. Nature, in her large operations, has no 
regard for the duration of time. Her courses are so 
sure that they are ever eventually successful; for, as to 
her, whose permanency is not computable, it matters not 
what period the process takes ; and she is as indifferent 
to the seconds of time whereby man’s brevity is spanned, 
as she is to the wastefulness of her own exuberant re¬ 
sources, knowing that neither is lost to the result at 
which she reaches. Consuming the one, and scattering 
broadcast the other, but in unnoticeable infinitesimals, 
she does it irrespective of the origin, the needs, or the 
duration of man, who can only watch her irrepressible 
advances by transmitting from generation to generation 
the record of his observations; marking thus by imagi¬ 
nary stations the course of the incessant stream which 
carries him upon its surface. 
That other bees are found besides the social bees, may 
be new to some of my readers, who will perhaps now 
learn, for the first time, that collective similarities of 
organization and habits associate other insects with 
“ the bee” as bees. Although the names “domestic 
bee,” “honey bee,” or “social bee,” imply a contra¬ 
distinction to some other “ bee,” yet it must have been 
very long before even the most acute observers could 
have noticed the peculiarities of structure which consti¬ 
tute other insects “ bees,” and ally the “ wild bees ” to 
the “ domestic bee,” from the deficiency of artificial 
means to examine minutely the organization whereby the 
affinity is clearly proved. This is also further shown in 
