154 
BRITISH BEES. 
amongst them. Either in the velocity of their flight, or 
in its playful evolutions and graceful undulations, they 
are unsurpassed, and they hover in the execution of their 
designs with pertinacious perseverance. No insect struc¬ 
ture can more thoroughly exemplify the most appropriate 
adaptation to its uses, and the most admirable elegance 
in the formation of the means of execution. 
I thus claim for them, and which I think I may with¬ 
out infraction of dispute, the distinctive rank amongst 
insects. 
Having fixed the station of the Hymenoptera generally, 
we have next to seek the relative rank of the natural 
divisions into which they readily separate. 
Taking structure and instinct conjunctively, there can 
be no doubt that the first position will be conceded to 
that division of the Order which comprises the aculeated 
tribes—those armed with stings,—some of whose mem¬ 
bers, in each of the three large divisions into which they 
fall, being social, that is, living in communities, orga¬ 
nized by a peculiar polity or administration. 
These aculeates divide into, first, the fossorial Hyme¬ 
noptera, or burrowers; and the equivalent branch the 
Diploptera, or wasps, distinguished and named from 
their folding the superior wings longitudinally in repose ; 
secondly, the heterogeneous Hymenoptera, or ants, named 
from the dissimilarity either in size or structure of their 
females, a peculiarity incidental to all the social Hyme¬ 
noptera, but living in community is more peculiarly cha¬ 
racteristic of this division, it being in the other divisions 
restricted to a few genera only, whereas here the soli¬ 
tary habit is the exceptional. In all cases of socialism 
there are three classes of individuals,—males, females, 
and abortive females. In the other social kinds of 
