50 
BRITISH BEES. 
flight. Even as Linnsens constructed a floral clock to 
indicate the succession of hours by the expansion of 
the blossoms of flowers, so might a Beethoven or a Men¬ 
delssohn—the latter in the spirit of his philosophical 
ancestor—note down the several sounds of the hum of 
the many kinds of bees to the construction of a scale 
of harmonic proportions, whose iEolian tones, heard in 
the fitfulness of accidental reverberation amidst the soli¬ 
tudes of nature, repeatedly awaken in the mind of the 
entomologist the soothing sensation of a soft, volup¬ 
tuous, but melancholy languor, or exhilarate him with 
the pleasing feeling of brisk liveliness and impatient 
energy. 
It is rarely that a bee is seen to walk, although a 
humble-bee or hive bee may be seen crawling sometimes 
from flower to flower on the same footstalk, but they 
are never good pedestrians. They convey themselves 
upon the wing from blossom to blossom, and even on 
proceeding home they alight close to the aperture of 
their excavated nidus, to which an unerring instinct 
seems to guide them. There occasionally they will 
meet with the intrusive parasite, to whom some genera 
[Anihophora, Colletes) give immediate battle, and usually 
succeed in repulsing the interloper, who patiently awaits 
a more favourable opportunity to effect her object. 
Bees are exceedingly susceptible of atmospheric 
changes; even the passage of a heavy cloud over the 
sun will drive them home; and if an easterly wind pre¬ 
vail, however fine the weather may otherwise be, they 
have a sort of rheumatic abhorrence of its influences, 
and abide at home, of which I have had sometimes woful 
experience in long unfruitful journeys. 
The cause would seem to be the deficiency of electri- 
* 
city in the air, for if the air be charged, and a westerly 
