It is rarely that a bee is seen to walk, although a humble-bee or hive bee may be seen crawling sometimes from flower to flower on the same footstalk, but they are never good pedestrians. They convey themselves upon the wing from blossom to blossom, and even on proceeding home they alight close to the aperture of their excavated nidus, to which an unerring instinct seems to guide them. There occasionally they will meet with the intrusive parasite, to whom some genera (_Anthophora_, _Colletes_) give immediate battle, and usually succeed in repulsing the interloper, who patiently awaits a more favourable opportunity to effect her object. Bees are exceedingly susceptible of atmospheric changes; even the passage of a heavy cloud over the sun will drive them home; and if an easterly wind prevail, however fine the weather may otherwise be, they have a sort of rheumatic abhorrence of its influences, and abide at home, of which I have had sometimes woful experience in long unfruitful journeys. The cause would seem to be the deficiency of electricity in the air, for if the air be charged, and a westerly wind blow, or there be a still sultriness with even an occasionally overcast sky, they are actively on the alert, and extremely vivacious. They are made so possibly by the operation of the influence upon their own system conjunctively with the intensity of its action upon the vegetable kingdom, and the secretions of the flowers both odorous and nectarian. Bees do not seem to be very early risers, the influence of the sun being their great prompter, and until that grows with the progress of the morning they are not numerously abroad. Early sometimes in the afternoon some species wend homewards, but during the greatest heat of the day they are most actively on the alert. The numbers of individuals that are on the wing at the same time must be astounding, for the inhabitants of a single colony, where they may, perhaps, be called semi-gregarious, from nidificating collectively within a circumscribed space, can be computed by myriads. And then the multitude of such colonies within even a limited area! When we add to this the many species with the same productiveness! Yet who, in walking abroad, sees them but the experienced entomologist? When we consider the important function they exercise in the economy of nature, and that but for them, in the majority of instances, flowers would expand their beautiful blossoms in abortive sterility, we can but wonder at the wise and exuberant provision which forecasts the necessity and provides accordingly. But that even these should not superabound, there is a counterbalance in the numerous _Enemies_ to which they are exposed. The insectivorous animals, birds, among which there is one especially their arch-enemy—the bee-eater; those reptiles which can reach them; many insects in a variety of ways, as the cuckoo-bees, whose foster-young starve the legitimate offspring by consuming its sustenance; and personal