British Bees / An Introduction into the Studies of the Natural History and Economy of the Bees Indigenous to the British Isles

by William Edward Shuckard

CHAPTER VI
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF SCIENTIFIC ARRANGEMENT.

The following rapid observations are addressed to those whom it is the desire that this series of volumes may induce to take up the study of Nature in a methodical manner. With this view, the merest summary of the principles upon which scientific arrangement is based, is here exhibited. The study requires method as a lodestar to guide through its intricacies, but it is one which, pursued simply as a recreation, yields both much amusement and gratifying instruction. It shows us that when we unclasp the book of nature, and wherever we may turn its leaves, every word, the syllables of which we strive to spell, is pregnant with the fruitfulness of wonderful wisdom, whose profound expression the human intellect is too limited thoroughly to comprehend.

Is there an arrangement that human skill could mend? Is there an organization that man can fully solve, or a combination that his mind can wholly compass? Do we not behold limitless perfection everywhere, but all so deeply mysterious. So exquisite are the feelings which the contemplation commands, that they imbue us deeply with the sense of the high privilege conferred upon the intellect by its being permitted to embrace a study, which, even pursued merely as a relaxation, inculcates in so serene and pleasing a manner such profound veneration and reverence.

To acquire the prospect of a possibility to unravel the exuberant profusion of the natural objects surrounding us, successive students of nature have endeavoured to systematize the seeming confusion in which her riches are spread about. Like has been brought to like, and gradation made to succeed gradation. Resemblances have been combined and disparities disjoined, until the labour of centuries has constructed of all the natural objects within the ken of man a vast and towering edifice, whose basis is seated at the lowest substructure of the earth which research has yet reached, but whose head ascends high into the empyrean.

All things have been collected, and arranged, and classed. Method has endeavoured to give them succession according to an assumed subordination. The labour of the great minds which framed the large theories of this vast branch of human knowledge, has permitted men of lesser powers of combination to abstract parts for special examination and investigation.

The study of natural science has progressively reached an extraordinary development, spreading in every direction its innumerable tentacula; to which the perfection of the telescope and of the microscope have still further added by the discovery of new worlds of wonder.

Just as language is systematized and made easier by grammar methodizing its co-ordinates and their relations, so natural science arranges its subjects into subdivisions of which genera and species are the lowest terms. The higher and more complicated are of many denominations, which, notwithstanding, have for their chief purpose the simplification of the survey by assisting accurately to determine accurately natural objects individually. Once the clue of the labyrinth caught, the seeming intricacy of its involution vanishes; for when a clear conception of the general scheme is obtained, the solution of the parts is comparatively easy. The same principle rules throughout, however variously treated.

The large divisions of nature appear simple and distinct enough in their great frame, but when we approach their confines, close investigation discovers analogies and affinities, which, where the separation seems most apparent, create insuperable difficulties, and render linear succession, or distinct division, nearly an impossibility. Here we find parallelism, and there radiation, and elsewhere a complicated reticulation without subordination; and this is one of the great problems, which it is the office of the mature naturalist to endeavour to solve. The present work has to do, however, with but one small portion of the whole.

Thus we see that, in order to arrive at a knowledge of natural objects, a method must be pursued to avoid being overwhelmed by their multiplicity, whereby confusion would be produced in the mind which their methodical investigation tends to dissipate. Their abundance precludes the possibility of their being all equally well known, although it is very desirable to have a general, if even superficial acquaintance with them, that is to say, in the broad and distinguishing features of their large groups, for as to an accurate knowledge of all their species, it would be futile to attempt it. Possessing this general knowledge, the attention may be turned with greater advantage in any special direction, and that pursued to its entire acquisition.

Natural objects have been arranged in Kingdoms, Orders, Classes, Families, and Genera, all deduced in their successive and collateral groups from characters exclusively derived from SPECIES; therefore to the accurate knowledge of species all endeavours must be directed, they comprising within themselves all the rest, although the characters upon which they themselves depend for separation from their congeners are the most trivial of any. Each combination, in its analytical descent, contains characters of wider compass than those which succeed it, and consequently embraces in that descent more species than the successive divisions; just as in the ascent, or synthetical method, the characters of every successive group gradually expand. Species being thus the only real objects in nature from which all knowledge springs, and in which exclusively all uses lie, other combinations being perhaps as merely imaginary as are the many lines which are drawn over the surface of the globes, it would imply that subdivisions merely lend aid to acquire more rapidly the details upon which they depend. We will, therefore, first turn our attention to species.