REVIEWS. 
99 
gested, little busy bee, was lisped in artless rhyme, till such time as the 
tomes of Keaumur, of Huber, or of Kirby, wiled us from repose, and 
lighted up again the waning hours, then sent us forth, with the return of 
day, in the fields and woodlands, to verify the more than fabulous wonders 
and yet unexhausted secrets of your true history. Where the garden 
blends gay colours and grateful scents in voluptuous profusion, there ye 
are found; in open forest glades, and deep-hollowed lanes, where the full 
gush of concentrated sunshine reverberates from the wayside bank, search¬ 
ing every nook and cranny, and flooding all with genial warmth and bril¬ 
liance, there your countless dwellings are, populous cities of Troglodytes. 
Free commoners of nature, yours, too, is the wide range of purple heather 
mantling the mountain slope far above the track of the gleaming plough¬ 
share, high aloft beyond the murky veil that wraps the clanking forges, 
and the atmosphere of carking cares hanging about the marts of 
human traffic; where the skylark’s song is silent and the chirrup of the 
grasshopper, and no voice awakes the quivering ether but your glad hum, 
unless it be the mellow tinkle of a sheep-bell, or the low gurgle of some 
tiny brook, treading its way unseen among huge, moss-clad stones, or 
that the distant boom of mighty ocean may come up, stealing faintly, 
as a ghost of sound, upon the uncertain ear. We welcome you, 
winged elves of the realm of flowers, and your historian, who comes to 
tell us of your families and kin, to teach your proper names, particular 
tastes and qualities. For, among bees, there are many shades and 
diversities of instinct; not all alike exemplify the character, moral and 
poetical, that is conventionally attributed to the race at large. There are 
domestic bees and wild, social and solitary, honey bees and parasites. 
Man’s wholesale pillage indeed is limited, in this country, to one species, 
the highest in the scale of instinct and intelligence ; but many others bear 
witness also to the poetical truth, that 
Vos non vobis mellificatis, apes. 
It is gratifying, however, to have such incontestable authority as Mr. 
Smith has adduced, to clear the reputation of sundry families of bees 
from the unmerited charge of setting up an establishment for self and 
family, without working, at the cost of their more industrious neighbours. 
Appearances indeed were against some of them, but our author teaches us 
that appearances are deceitful: “ Observation alone can be relied upon, 
when the history of an insect is to be written ; all classification, based upon 
structural differences alone, will frequently be at fault.” On behalf of the 
whole family Atidrenidce the general plea is put in “ not guilty.” u The 
