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

The amount of toil thus saved to the describing naturalist, and to those who wish to name their specimen, the experienced only can estimate. This brevity of specific character is one of Linnæus’s terse and valuable axioms, who limits its length to twelve words. The best examples, I think, that I can adduce in entomology, of valuable and exemplary specific descriptions, is Gyllenhal’s ‘Insecta Suecica’ which contains exclusively a description of Swedish Coleoptera; Gravenhorst’s large monograph of European Ichneumons; Erichson’s elaborate work upon the Staphylinidæ; and our own Kirby’s ‘Monographia Apum Angliæ.’ Their perfection consists in fulfilling thoroughly all the above conditions, for if any doubt exist upon comparing your insect with their descriptions, you may be fully assured yours is not identical. The only drawback to the utility of Mr. Kirby’s book is that he had to deal with insects variable in condition from many causes, and the variable state of the insect that may have to be compared; his description has evidently been made sometimes from a worn specimen, one that had been exposed to wind and weather, and sometimes from an insect in fine condition. Thus it is important that compared insects should be in an identical state to substantiate the comparison,—a difficulty which this family has specially to contend with, as these insects are more liable than almost any others to vary, owing to their specific character depending much upon pubescence, which is extremely subjected to many modifying influences, for the tinges and positive colour of the hair will much vary by exposure, as it is not possible always to capture a bright individual.

Taking specific description thus practically in its full and wide sense, it is requisite, for the purpose of avoiding repetition, that all the characters of the superior combinations should be eliminated, leaving it with those only which have not been thus absorbed, which now constitute its sole remaining distinctive specific peculiarities. Every species necessarily contains within itself, every character of every combination in direct line above it, although these have been gradually abstracted to form those several combinations which are arrived at successively in the synthetical ascent. Analytically, species are the last but combining element of all, although their most remote members. The whole system is an ingenious contrivance for breaking down a complex multiplicity of characters, to simplify the means of reaching all the collateral or adjacent species, that we may be able to determine identity or difference.

Entomology, and indeed natural history generally, uses three words, very much alike, but very different in signification and application. These are, habit, habits, and habitat. The habit is that peculiar character of identity, that je ne sais quoi, which marks all the species of a genus collectively, and which, in some cases, only the trained eye can detect. It is then seen instantaneously, and forcibly illustrates the extreme precision the study of the natural sciences tends to cultivate. Their utility, also, as a discipline to the mind, conjunctively with the keen accuracy which practice gives the sight, are qualifications not lightly to be esteemed.

It is from such absolute control of detail that the most efficient power of generalizing emanates, which, when it has once become habitual, gives, from its rapidity, an almost instinctive facility, as its inevitable concomitant, for both synthetical and analytical survey. The mind thus becomes strengthened by vigorous exercise, and has always, for every purpose, a powerful instrument at command, often used unconsciously, but always effectively. Thus is habit, once correctly perceived, ever retained.

The habits are the peculiar manners and economy of a species; and the habitat is the kind of locality the creatures affect, such as hill or plain, wood or meadow, forest or fell, hedgebank or decaying timber, sand or chalk or clay, and ground vertical or horizontal; and the metropolis of a species—another term in use—is the centralization of the general habitat where the insect either nidificates collectively with its fellows, or, where, from any other cause, it may be found in its season, usually in profusion. But good fortune does not always attend the discovery of this locality.

It is by the acquired skill of perceiving habit, that a large and confused collection may be sorted rapidly, or fresh captures immediately placed with their congeners, without the necessity of going tediously through all the descriptive characteristics. Incidental errors are afterwards speedily corrected. It is then that the specific character exhibits its utility by enabling us at once to distinguish the new from the old.

The concentration and summary of the specific character is the name of the species, or trivial name as it is sometimes called, which is, as it were, the baptismal designation that attaches to it always afterwards, and is contemporaneous with the introduction of the creature into the series of recognized beings.

Upon the revival of the study of natural history, when learning dawned after the night of the Middle Ages, much difficulty attached to the imposition of discriminative names. The works of the ancients were ransacked, and endeavours made to verify and apply the names they had used. Ray published a vocabulary of such names. But the ancients never studied natural history in the systematic way pursued by the moderns; they did not want the skill, but they wanted the facilities. Anatomy and physiology had not made the progress necessary to aid them in the pursuit, and the assistance all these sciences obtain from optical instruments was barred from them. The names they gave to natural objects were vernacular names, which, like our own vernacular names, applied rather to groups than to species, and have in consequence ultimately become the names of genera. But this was the work of time, with which discovery progressed. As these discoveries were made by the new cultivators of natural history, they added them to those which they resembled, by some brief distinctive character adapted to the momentary exigency, such as major, or minor, etc.; and these additions were constantly treated as varieties of the species, whose name headed the list by the designation first adopted. Discoveries still continued, which were compulsively arranged with the predecessors they most nearly resembled, until resemblances vanished, and the boundaries fixed by the assumed correct application of the names thus derived from the ancients were passed, and there was an overflow on all sides.

To meet this difficulty, the new discriminative name had to be moulded into a phrase to correct its exceptive peculiarities, and specific names became descriptive phrases, the bulk of which no memory could retain, and which usually were neither clear nor expressive. Thus genera were continually treated as species, and species as numbered varieties, with long distinguishing descriptive phrases.

So it remained till day dawned, and the great luminary of systematic natural history rose with a bound to irradiate the obscurity of science with his subtile and vivifying beams.