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CHAPTER VII. 
BRIEF NOTICE OF THE SCIENTIFIC CULTIVATION 
OF BRITISH BEES. 
With the great John Ray dawns the scientific cultiva¬ 
tion of British bees. Before his time, the only entomo- 
logical work which had been published in England was 
Dr. Mouffett’s ‘ Theatrum Insectorum.’ In this work 
there is an ample account of the domestic bee, with 
gleanings from many sources of some of its habits and 
economy, but there is no notice of any insects, excepting 
some species of the genus Bombus, which may be at all 
consorted with the social bee by affinities of structure 
or identity of function. 
In Ray’s correspondence with his disciples and friends, 
we have straggling observations upon the habits of a few 
wild-bees, especially some jotted down by his diligent 
pupil, the distinguished Francis Willughby. It is in 
Ray’s posthumous ‘ Historia Insectorum,’ published in 
1710, at the instance of the Royal Society, that we first 
find collected together all that had been previously 
known of ' British Bees.’ In that work he describes 
them systematically. He there arranges the bees into 
Apis and Bombylius , which may be regarded almost as 
genera. 
