New Zealand. Halictus.
Australia [but no distinct locality]. Anthophora; Saropoda.
CHAPTER IV
NOTICE OF THE MORE CONSPICUOUS FOREIGN GENERA OF BEES.
Seeing thus the wide and almost universal distribution of many of our own genera, we might be induced to ask whether this could not suffice, by the impetus which more genial climates give to the multiplication of individuals, to meet all the exigencies of the most favoured regions of the vegetable kingdom. This is not so. There seems scarcely a limit to the exuberance wherein nature revels in the production of variations of form. The splendour, elegance, and infinite variety which she displays in her floral beauties in the most luxuriant climates, find rivalry as well in the multitude as in the magnificence of the insects which she has allied with them as the indispensable promoters of their perpetuation. How otherwise than through some of the insects we shall mention could tropical Labiatæ and the tubulated flowers of the Rubiaceæ, etc. be fertilized? The reader will therefore, I trust, welcome an acquaintance with some of the most conspicuous of the group of bees produced by tropical countries, although the main object of this treatise is to exhibit the attractions of “our native bees.”
I will but superficially and rapidly glance at the more distinguished exotic genera and species, as supplementary to the preceding notice of the geographical range of those which are indigenous with us.
How our own species reached us is a subject which has at present eluded all satisfactory determination. For its solution we must await the further discoveries of geology; at present we can only attribute their advent here to the same causes which are common to the production of all our groups of both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms.
Knowing how affluent tropical and sub-tropical countries are in the variety, size, and number of the forms, as well as in the splendour of their plants and vertebrated animals, we may fairly expect as gorgeous a richness in the insects they produce. Nor shall we be disappointed, for the imperial magnificence of their Lepidoptera and Coleoptera guarantees an equivalent brilliancy in the other orders of insects, and which is fully confirmed by the harmonious splendour of their bees.
They thus put forward claims to attention and must excite curiosity by their beauty and size, which the comparative smallness of our own, and the usual dulness of their colours do not possess. The latter only repay notice upon close investigation, but they then as amply reward all labour bestowed upon them by the mental recreation they yield, as their more gaudy exotic rivals. The former present themselves obtrusively and exact notice, whereas ours meekly solicit it by their humble but solid allurements. Here, as well as there, we behold the works of a mighty hand and of an immeasurable intelligence.
The bees throughout the world, as known collectively to the richest cabinets, number about two thousand species. This host, in itself numerically so large, solicits attention, for it is opposed to the economy of nature that there should exist any without functions of essential usefulness, making them important elements in her harmonious order and necessary to her due course, irrespective of the instruction to be derived from the study of the manifold varieties of structure, which unquestionably point to distinguishing peculiarities of habits.