The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting SpeciesFiguier, Louis
Science
The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting Species
Figuier, Louis
Insects
Ten or twelve other species of honey-bees exist in Senegal, the Cape
of Good Hope, Madagascar, East Indies at Timor (_Apis Peronii_), &c.
The European bee has been acclimatised in America, but it soon returns
to its wild state, as indeed do all our domestic animals when
transported to the other hemisphere. At the Cape of Good Hope the
Hottentots seek greedily after the nests of wild bees, a bird called
the Indicator guiding them in this chase. This bird is observed
flitting about from tree to tree, making a little significant cry.
They have only then to follow this bird-informer, for it will not be
long in stopping before some hollow tree which contains a nest of
bees. The Hottentots always acknowledge its services by leaving it a
part of the booty.
Fenimore Cooper, the novelist, tells us, in his work entitled "The
Prairie," how the bee-hunters in America discover the wild hives. They
place on a plank, covered with white paint still moist, a piece of
bread covered with sugar or honey. The bees, in plundering this bread,
get some of the paint on their bodies, and are then more easily
tracked when they return to their hives. In North America they are, as
it were, the harbingers of civilisation. When the Indians perceive a
swarm trying to establish themselves in the solitudes of their
forests, they say to one another, "The white man is approaching; he
will soon be here." True pioneers of civilisation, these insects seem
to announce to the forests and deserts of the New World that the reign
of Nature has passed away, and that now the social state has begun to
play its part--a part that will never end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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