It would be curious to know if the means of communication thus evidently possessed by animals, extends beyond the social and gregarious tribes, and whether the faculty undergoes any change through differences of climate and locality, as man has done in the lapse of time. For man, notwithstanding the vastly divergent differences of race, may be obscurely tracked through the dim trail of the affiliation of languages to one common origin. But the complete identity of habit throughout the world of those genera which are native with us, would seem to affirm that they are as closely allied in every other particular, were we in a condition to make the investigation, and whence we may conclusively assume that they all had one central commencement. That this mode of communication, and this exercise of the organ in the solitary tribes is limited to the season of their amours is very probable, and I apprehend that it is not exercised between individuals of distinct species. But that, at that period, their action is intensified may be presumed from the then greater activity of the males, who seem to have been called into existence only to fulfil that great object of nature, and which she associates invariably with gratification and pleasure. Even in plants it may be observed to be attended with something very analogous to animal enjoyment in the peculiar development at that period of an excessively energetic propulsion, which is the nearest approach the vegetable kingdom makes to the higher phase of sensiferous life. The clothing and colouring of bees are very various, but the gayest are the parasites, red and yellow, with their various tints, and white and cream-colour decorate them. The ordinary colour is deep brown, or chestnut, or black. Where the pubescence is not dense, they are often deeply punctured, and exhibit many metallic tinges. Many are thickly clothed with long hair, and this, especially in the _Bombi_ and _Apathi_, is sometimes of bright gay colour, yellow, red, white, of a rich brown, or an intense black, sometimes in bands of different tints upon the same insect, and sometimes of one uniform hue. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III SKETCH OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF THE GENERA OF BRITISH BEES. IN giving a broad sketch of the geography of the genera of bees which are native to our islands, but whose local distribution I shall reserve for notice in the account of the genera themselves, I must regret at the outset the lack of materials for its satisfactory treatment.