GENERAL HISTORY OF BEES. 
59 
either attracted by sound, or meeting it by accident, it 
came across a fellow ; they plied their antennse together, 
and the result was that both returned to their dead com¬ 
panion, and dragged him away to their burrowing-place, 
—an extraordinary instance of intercommunication which 
I can vouch for. 
It would be curious to know if the means of commu¬ 
nication thus evidently possessed by animals, extends 
beyond the social and gregarious tribes, and whether the 
faculty undergoes any change through differences of 
climate and locality, as man has done in the lapse of 
time. For man, notwithstanding the vastly divergent 
differences of race, may be obscurely tracked through 
the dim trail of the affiliation of languages to one com¬ 
mon origin. But the complete identity of habit through¬ 
out the world of those genera which are native with us, 
would seem to affirm that they are as closely allied in 
every other particular, were we in a condition to make 
the investigation, and whence we may conclusively 
assume that they all had one central commencement. 
That this mode of communication, and this exercise 
of the organ in the solitary tribes is limited to the 
season of their amours is very probable, and I appre¬ 
hend that it is not exercised between individuals of dis¬ 
tinct species. But that, at that period, their action is 
intensified may be presumed from the then greater acti¬ 
vity of the males, who seem to have been called into 
existence only to fulfil that great object of nature, and 
which she associates invariably with gratification and 
pleasure. Even in plants it may be observed to be at¬ 
tended with something very analogous to animal enjoy¬ 
ment in the peculiar development at that period of an 
excessively energetic propulsion, which is the nearest 
