Thus, long before the three great branches of the human race, the Aryan, Shemitic, and Turonian, took their divergent courses from the procreative nest which was to populate the earth, and which Max Müller proposes to call the Rhematic period, they were already endowed from their patrimony with the best gifts nature could present to them; and they were thus fitted, in their estrangement from their home, with the requirements, which the vicissitudes they might have to contend with in their migrations, most needed. They would eventually have settled into varying conditions, differently modified by time acting conjunctively with climate and position, until, in the lapse of years, and the changes the earth has since undergone, the stamp impressed by these causes, which would have been originally evanescent, became indelible. That but one language was originally theirs, the researches of philology distinctly prove, by finding a language still more ancient than its Aryan, Shemitic, and Turonian derivatives. From this elder language these all spring, their common origin being deduced from the analogies extant in each. These investigations are confirmed by the Scriptural account that “The whole earth was of one language and of one speech,” previous to the Flood, and it describes the first migration as coincident with the subsidence of the waters.
That violent cataclysms have since altered the face of the then existing earth, the records of geological science amply show; and that some of mankind, in every portion of the then inhabited world, survived these catastrophes, and subsequently perpetuated the varieties of race, may be inferred from those differences in moral and physical features which now exist, and which have sometimes suggested the impossibility of a collective derivation from one stock. The philological thread, although generally a mere filament of extreme tenuity, holds all firmly together.
That animals had been domesticated in a very early stage of man’s existence, we have distinct proof in many recent geological discoveries, and all these discoveries show the same animals to have been in every instance subjugated; thus pointing to a primitive and earlier domestication in the regions where both were originally produced. That pasture land was provided for the sustenance of these animals, they being chiefly herbivorous, is a necessary conclusion. Thence ensues the fair deduction that phanerogamous, or flower-bearing plants coexisted, and bees, consequently, necessarily too,—thus participating reciprocal advantages, they receiving from these plants sustenance, and giving them fertility.
These islands, under certain modifications, were, previous to the glacial period, one land with the continent of Europe; and it was when thus connected that those many tropical forms of animal life, whose fossil remains are found embedded in our soil, passed hither. By the comparatively rapid intervention of geological changes, some of the lower forms of life went no further than the first land they reached, and are, consequently, not even now to be found so far west as Ireland: the migration appears clearly to have come from the East. Thus, although we have no direct evidence of the presence of “bees,” yet as insects must have existed here, from the certainty that the remains of insect-feeding reptiles are found, as well as those of herbivorous animals, it may be concluded that “bees” also abounded.
Claiming thus this very high antiquity for man’s nutritive “bee,” which was of far earlier utility to him than the silkworm, whose labours demanded a very advanced condition of skill and civilization to be made available; it is perfectly consistent, and indeed needful, to claim the simultaneous existence of all the bee’s allies. The earliest Shemitic and Aryan records, the Book of Job, the Vedas, Egyptian sculptures and papyri, as well as the poems of Homer, confirm the early cultivation of bees by man for domestic uses; and their frequent representation in Egyptian hieroglyphics, wherein the bee occurs as the symbol of royalty, clearly shows that their economy, with a monarch at its head, was known; a hive, too, being figured, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson tells us, upon a very ancient tomb at Thebes, is early evidence of its domestication there, and how early, even historically, it was brought under the special dominion of mankind. To these particulars I shall have occasion to refer more fully when the course of my narrative brings me to treat of the geographical distribution of the “honey-bee;” I adduce it now merely to intimate how very early, even in the present condition of the earth, bees were beneficial to mankind, and that, therefore, the connection may have subsisted, as I have previously urged, in the remotest and very primitive ages of the existence of man; and that imperatively with them, the entire family of which they form a unit only, was also created.
In America, where Apis mellifica is of European introduction, swarms of this bee, escaping domestication, resume their natural condition, and have pressed forward far into the uncleared wild; and widely in advance of the conquering colonist, they have taken their abode in the primitive, unreclaimed forest. Nor do they remain stationary, but on, still on, with every successive year, spreading in every direction; and thus surely indicating to the aboriginal red-man the certain, if even slow, approach of civilization, and the consequent necessity of his own protective retreat:—a strong instance of the distributive processes of nature. It clearly shows how the wild bees may have similarly migrated in all directions from the centre of their origin. That they are now found at the very ultima Thule, so far away from their assumed incunabula, and with such apparent existing obstructions to their distributive progress, is a proof, had we no other, that the condition of the earth must have been geographically very different at the period of their beginning, and that vast geological changes have, since then, altered its physical features. Where islands now exist, these must then have formed portions of widely sweeping continents; and seas have been dry land, which have since swept over the same area, insulating irregular portions by the submergence of irregular intervals, and thus have left them in their present condition, with their then existing inhabitants restricted to the circuit they now occupy. That long periods of time must necessarily have elapsed to have effected this by the methods we still see in operation, is no proof that it has not been. Nature, in her large operations, has no regard for the duration of time. Her courses are so sure that they are ever eventually successful; for, as to her, whose permanency is not computable, it matters not what period the process takes; and she is as indifferent to the seconds of time whereby man’s brevity is spanned, as she is to the wastefulness of her own exuberant resources, knowing that neither is lost to the result at which she reaches. Consuming the one, and scattering broadcast the other, but in unnoticeable infinitesimals, she does it irrespective of the origin, the needs, or the duration of man, who can only watch her irrepressible advances by transmitting from generation to generation the record of his observations; marking thus by imaginary stations the course of the incessant stream which carries him upon its surface.
That other bees are found besides the social bees, may be new to some of my readers, who will perhaps now learn, for the first time, that collective similarities of organization and habits associate other insects with “the bee” as bees. Although the names “domestic bee,” “honey-bee,” or “social bee,” imply a contradistinction to some other “bee,” yet it must have been very long before even the most acute observers could have noticed the peculiarities of structure which constitute other insects “bees,” and ally the “wild bees” to the “domestic bee,” from the deficiency of artificial means to examine minutely the organization whereby the affinity is clearly proved. This is also further shown in the poverty of our language in vernacular terms to express them distinctively; for even the name of “wild bees,” in as far as it has been applied to any except the “honey-bee” in a wildered state, is a usage of modern introduction, and of date subsequent to their examination and appreciation. Our native tongue, in the words “bee,” “wasp,” “fly,” and “ant,” compasses all those thousands of different winged and unwinged insects, which modern science comprises in the two very extensive Orders in entomology of the Hymenoptera and the Diptera;—thus exhibiting how very poor common language is in words to note distinctive differences in creatures, even where the differences are so marked, and the habits so dissimilar, as in the several groups constituting these Orders. But progressively extending knowledge, and a more familiar intimacy with insects and their habits, will doubtless, in the course of time, supervene, as old aversions, prejudices, and superstitions wear out, when by the light of instruction we shall gradually arouse to perceive that “His breath has passed that way too;” and that, therefore, they all put forth strong claims to the notice and admiration of man.
It is highly improbable that ordinary language will ever find distinctive names to indicate genera, and far less species: and although we have some few words which combine large groups, such as “gnats,” “flesh-flies,” “gad-flies,” “gall-flies,” “dragon-flies,” “sand wasps,” “humble-bees,” etc. etc.; and, although the small group, it is my purpose in the following pages to show in all their attractive peculiarities, has had several vernacular denominations applied to them to indicate their most distinctive characteristics, such as “cuckoo-bees,” “carpenter bees,” “mason bees,” “carding bees,” etc., yet many which are not thus to be distinguished, will have to wait long for their special appellation.
The first breathings of spring bring forth the bees. Before the hedge-rows and the trees have burst their buds, and expanded their yet delicate green leaves to the strengthening influence of the air, and whilst only here and there the white blossoms of the blackthorn sparkle around, and patches of chickweed spread their bloom in attractive humility on waste bits of ground in corners of fields,—they are abroad. Their hum will be heard in some very favoured sunny nook, where the precocious primrose spreads forth its delicate pale blossom, in the modest confidence of conscious beauty, to catch the eye of the sun, as well as—
“Daffodils, that come before the swallow dares,