A NEW ARRANGEMENT OF BRITISH BEES, WITH ITS RATIONALE, AND AN INTRODUCTION TO THE FAMILY, SUBFAMILIES, SECTIONS, AND SUBSECTIONS. IF perfection of instinct, and an organization exquisitely moulded to a complete adaptation to the many delicate and varied functions of that instinct, as well as to the exercise of every faculty incidental to the class, be certainly a proof of pre-eminence, we may justly claim this position for the Order Hymenoptera. There is no characteristic in which they are deficient, nor any in which some of the members of the Order do not transcend in aptitude the insects of all the others. If they have not been placed at the head of the class Insecta, it has been because systematic convenience did not permit the transposition, on account of the interruption it would have caused to the convenient linking of the rest in a consecutive arrangement. Yet are they the most volatile fliers, the most agile runners, the most skilful burrowers, and consummate architects. The beauty resulting from the combinations of symmetry of form, elegance of motion, brilliancy of colour, and vivacity of expression, is to be found exclusively 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 structure 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 without 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 members, in each of the three large divisions into which they fall, being social, that is, living in communities, organized by a peculiar polity or administration.