128 
BRITISH BEES. 
metropolis of a species—another term in use—is the 
centralization of the general habitat where the insect 
either nidificates collectively with its fellows, or, where, 
from any other cause, it may be found in its season, 
usually in profusion. But good fortune does not always 
attend the discovery of this locality. 
It is by the acquired skill of perceiving habit, that 
a large and confused collection may be sorted rapidly, 
or fresh captures immediately placed with their conge¬ 
ners, without the necessity of going tediously through 
all the descriptive characteristics. Incidental errors are 
afterwards speedily corrected. It is then that the specific 
character exhibits its utility by enabling us at once to dis¬ 
tinguish the new from the old. 
The concentration and summary of the specific cha¬ 
racter is the name of the species, or trivial name as it 
is sometimes called, which is, as it were, the baptismal 
designation that attaches to it always afterwards, and is 
contemporaneous with the introduction of the creature 
into the series of recognized beings. 
Upon the revival of the study of natural history, when 
learning dawned after the night of the Middle Ages, 
much difficulty attached to the imposition of discrimi¬ 
native names. The works of the ancients were ransacked, 
and endeavours made to verify and apply the names they 
had used. Hay published a vocabulary of such names. 
But the ancients never studied natural history in the sys¬ 
tematic way pursued by the moderns ; they did not want 
the skill, but they wanted the facilities. Anatomy and 
physiology had not made the progress necessary to aid 
them in the pursuit, and the assistance all these sciences 
obtain from optical instruments was barred from them. 
The names they gave to natural objects were vernacular 
