The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects

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hiding-place to find the road before it free. The Xylocopce pass the winter in the pupa state, and the perfect insects, with wings of a beautiful metallic violet, appear in the spring, but are not found in Great Britain (Fig. 339). Other solitary bees have their hind legs unsuited for the gathering

' Fig. 342. — Rose Megachile {Megachile centuncularis).

of pollen, but have the rings of the abdomen furnished with hairs for that purpose. Such are the Mason Bees of Reaumur, belonging to

the genera Osmia and Chaiicodoma,''' which build their nests against walls with tempered earth, which become very hard.

• At a meeting of the Entomological Society of London, Feb. i8th, 1867, Mr. Newman exhibited the lock of a door, one of several which in 1866 were found at the Kent Waterworks, Deptford, to be completely filled and choked up wiih nestS of Osmia Bicornis: a portion of the nest had been forced out by the insertion of the

H Y MEN OP TERA . 3 6/

These nests (Figs. 340 and 341) are filled with cells of oblong form arranged irregularly. At first sight they might be taken for little lumps of earth plastered against the wall. When the perfect insect emerges, it is obliged to soften the mortar with its saliva, and to remove it, grain by grain, with its mandibles. The nests of Chalicodomas are common in the environs of Paris, on walls of rough stones exposed to the south. They are often to be found in the parks of Meudon, of Conflans, of Vesinet, &c. The Leaf-cutting Bees {Megackik) are not less worthy of remark in their habits. These insects make their nests in tubes lined with the leaves of the rose, the willow, the lilac, &c., placed in a cylindrical burrow. Each nest contains generally from three to six cells, separated by partitions of leaves. They cut off the pieces of leaves they require with their mandibles, the notches being wonderfully cleanly cut, as if they had been done with a punch. They make as many as eight or ten envelopes in succession with the leaves, which, as they get dry, contract, keeping, however, the form given to them by the insect. The cells destined to receive the-eggs acquire thus a certain solidity. Fig. 342 pj represents the nest of the Megachile. Gallery of an Andrena.

The Upholsterer Bees (Anthocopas) line their nests with the petals of flowers, as, for example (Papaver 7'/ums)y the corn-poppy. Their burrows are made perpendicularly in the beaten earth of roads, and each contains one solitary cell, lined with portions of petals. When the egg has been laid at the bottom of this cell, the bee fills up the rest of the hole with earth, to hide it from notice.

The Mining Bees {Andrence) hollow out in the ground tubular galleries (Fig. 343). They are not larger than ordinary flies. A great number of other bees are known, but their habits are little under- Stood, and we shall not occupy ourselves about them.

Wasps.

Every one knows the wasps as a race of dangerous brigands which live by rapine, are incessantly fighting battles, and exist only to dp

key. The locks were in pretty constant use, so. that the ne ts must have been built in the course of a few days. — Journal of Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London, 1.86/;, Ixxyi. — Ep.

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harm. However, wasps, like Figaro, are better than they are reputed to be. Their societies are admirably organised; their nests are models

of industry and artistic fancy (Fig. 344). I'hey have certain domestic

Fig. 344.— Wasp's Nest.

virtues which deserve our esteem; only they are an excitable race it is well not to cross. If great heat adds to their natural irritability, they savagely attack those who annoy them, and pursue them to a distance. No one, indeed, is ignorant that their sting is very painful. In cold weather, and towards night, they are less vivacious and less to be dreaded.

The wasps are distinguished from the bees by a decided characteristic. In a state of repose they fold together their upper wings, which then seem very umtow, only spreading them out when they are about to fly; whilst the latter when at rest keep their upper wings spread out. Wasps live in companies, which last only a year, and are composed of males, females, and workers. But the female wasp does not pass her entire life in idleness as a queen, like the mother hive bee. She occupies herself in making the nest and in taking care of the young, like the mother humble bee. The males have also their duties. They

Fig- 345. — Common Wasp (Vespa vulgaris). Fig. 346.— Bush Wasp {Vespa norvegica).

watch over the cleanliness of the habitation, and are the sanitary commissioners and undertakers to the city. These are easily recognised by their oblong bodies, having so slight a connection with the thorax, as it were by a thread.

Their sting is larger than that of the bees, and is supplied with poison from a pouch placed at its base. The males have no sting. Wasps do not secrete wax. With their mandibles they scrape wood and plants, the fragments of which they agglutinate together in such a way as to form a tough cardboard. Thus, they invented the manufacture of paper long before men. Charles de Geer, in his celebrated work, sums up the habits of these insects in the following manner:— "Wasps," says he, " are, like bees, fond of sweets and honey, although they rarely seek them in flowers; but their principal food consists in matters of quite a different kind, such as fruits of all kinds, raw flesh, and live insects, which they seize and devour. They sometimes do dreadful damage in beehives, devouring the honey, and killing the bees. They do not gather wax; their nests and their combs are composed of a matter resembling grey paper, which they get from rotten wood, and which they scrape off with their jaws; they make a sort of paste of these scrapings by moistening them with a certain

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370 liquid which they disgorge. The cells in the combs are hexagonal, and very regular, like those of bees."*

Wasps collect the materials with which they build near the place

Fig. 347. — The Hornet {Vespa crahro).

where they have chosen to establish their domicile. These materials are ligneous fibre, mixed up with saliva, with the aid of which they prepare the paper-like substance, which is very tough, and destined; to form the walls of the cells and their outer covering. The greateil number make their habitation in the ground.^ Of these is our Common Wasp ( Vespa vu/gariSy

Fig. 345), which is black, agreeably con-i trasted with bright yellow. The Bush Wasi; ( V. norvegica. Fig. 346), which inhabits woods, constructs its nest between the branches olj shrubs or bushes. It is smaller than the common species. The Hornet (Fig. 347) is the largest European species of the family ol the Vespidce. Its nest, which is constructed

Fig. 348. — Polistes gallica. of a yellowish and very fragile substance, is built under a roof, in a loft, or in the hole 01 an old wall, but most often in the hollow of a decayed tree. Anothei species of this family {Poltstes gallica, Fig. 348) fixes its little nest b) a foot-stalk to the stem of some plant.

Wasps begin laying in spring, and go on laying all the summer. Each cell receives one single ^%%^ and, as with bees, the w^orkers' eggs are the first laid. Eight days after the laying, there comes out ol each egg a larva without feet, and already provided with two mandibles. These larvae receive their food in the form of balls, which

• " Memoires pour servir a I'HistQire des lusectes," tome ii., p. 765. Tr 410. Stockholm, 1 771.

the females or the workers knead up with their mandibles and their legs before presenting to their nurselings, much in the same way as birds give their beak full of food to their little ones. At the end of three weeks the larvae cease to take food, and begin to shut themselves up in their cells, the interior of which they line with a coating of silk. In this they change their form, and assume the appearance of the perfect insect, with its six legs and its wings, but motionless, and contracted together. A sort of bag keeps all the organs swathed up together (Fig. 349). This pupa state lasts for eight or nine days, at the end of which time the insect is fully developed; it casts its skin, breaks the door of its prison, and launches itself into the air. A cell is no sooner abandoned than a worker visits, cleans it, and puts it in a fit p^jj l^{^^ state to receive another tgg. common wasp.

During the summer the female wasp remains constantly in the nest, absorbed with family cares. She is occupied in laying eggs and in feeding her progeny, with the active assistance of the workers, or mules, as Reaumur and Charles de Geer call them, because they are unfruitful.

In the interior of the nests you generally find a thoroughly 'ii||good understanding existing, and the most perfect order, in spite of the warlike instincts of these insects. It is only on rare occasions that this domestic peace is disturbed by the quarrels of male with 0 male or worker with worker; but these combats are not deadly. In Never, moreover, has one nest of wasps been known to declare war igainst another for the purpose of robbing it. "The government ot c ivasps," says M. Victor Rendu, " explains very well the gentleness of a their public conduct. Amongst them there are no despots; no one either reigns or governs; each one lives at liberty in a free city, on :he sole condition of never being a burden to the state. They all act n concert, without privileges or monopohes, under the influence of a :ommon law — the great law of the public good, frcm which no one is exempted."''' But this model repubhc is fatally doomed to early destruction. \t the approach of winter all the workers, as also the males, perish, some pregnant females alone hold out against the cold, and get hrough the winter, to propagate and perpetuate their species. Before dying, these insects destroy all the larvae which are not latched at the first approach of cold weather. In spring the females