The Living Animals of the World, Volume II: Birds, Reptiles and Amphibians, Fishes, Jointed Animals, Molluscs, etc.

Intermediate between the boring and stinging insects PINE-BOEING WASP (MALE). of this order comes the small family of the RUBY-TAILED Smaller than the female, and very different in appearance. FLIES. These are brilliantly coloured bronze-red, blue, or green metallic four-winged flies, with the thorax covered with large depressions, and the abdomen smooth, and usually composed, as seen from above, of one large, smooth joint, and in a variable one or two much smaller coarsely punctured ones beyond it, the last ending number of short teeth. They roll themselves up in a ball when alarmed, and are parasites, depositing their eggs in the nests of other insects. An entomologist once saw a ruby-tailed

CRCESUS BUTTERFLY OF BATCHIAN.

Male, natural size.

Photos by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S., Regent's Park,

CRCESUS BUTTERFLY OF BATCHIAN.

Female, slightly reduced.

UNIV. OF

CALIFORNIA

Stinging Four-winged Insects 705

fly hurled to the ground by a mason-bee which had built her nest in a hole in a wall. The fly rolled herself up into a ball, when the bee bit off her wings, and then flew away. But as soon as she was gone the wingless fly stretched herself out again, and climbed up the wall to the bee’s nest to deposit her eggs.

The group of stinging insects begins with the ANTS, which are probably the most intelligent animals now living in the world. Different species, however, differ very much in their manners and customs, and in the grade of civilisation to which they have attained. Some of the more industrious among them keep other insects as cattle, and even as pets; others harvest grain, while a few species cultivate grain for their own use; and others make large mushroom-beds of comminuted leaves, and thus do great harm to cultivated trees in many parts of tropical America. When the industrious ants are not too busy, they sometimes indulge in sports and pastimes. But there are some species which live in idle communities. Such ants are only energetic as marauders, and are so degraded that

they cannot even feed themselves, and starve to death if they are deprived of the services of their black slaves, which have been carried off as pupæ by the others in piratical raids, and brought up by other slaves, which do all the work in the nests of their captors.

Quitting the ANTS, we arrive at a rather extensive series of insects of moderate or considerable size, and with very spiny legs, called BURROWING-WASPS. They are brightly coloured, active insects, and generally dig holes in the ground, which they provision with caterpillars, grasshoppers, or spiders, which they paralyse with their stings, and leave in a moribund condition to form the food of their progeny. They are generally winged in both sexes, but in one family the females are stout and very hairy, and look like large hairy ants, while the males are slender winged insects, very unlike their partners. In the burrowing-wasps the front of the thorax, or second division of the body, is usually transverse, and often narrow; but in the TRUE WASPS it bends back to the wings. Among these latter it is only the small group of the SOCIAL WASPS which are gregarious, and among which we find workers as well as males and females. The largest of the British wasps is the HORNET; but there are several much larger species in the East Indies, some of which are black and yellow, like the Chinese MANDARIN-WASP, the largest of all, which often measures 2 inches across the wings. Others are black, with one large reddish band on the abdomen. Their nests, which they construct of a kind of paper, are formed in a hole in the ground, in a hollow tree, or in a bush, or under the eaves of a house. A nest is commenced by a single female which has survived the winter, and is afterwards enlarged by the exertions of her progeny.

The last group in this order are the BEES. They may generally be easily recognised by their shaggy bodies and legs. As with the Wasps, most species are solitary, or live in very small communities. Some few are smooth,

Photo by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S.] [Regent’s Park. ICHNEUMON-FLY. One of the largest British species of a very extensive group of parasitic insects.

Photos by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S., Regent’s Park.

RUBY-TAILED FLY.

Generally of a brilliant metallic green or blue. WOOD-ANT. The largest species found in Britain. 89

of the World?o6 The Living Animals and more or less metallic. A photograph of a large and beautiful South American species appears in the Coloured Plate. The largest British bees are the stout-bodied HUMBLE- BEES, or BUMBLE-BEES, which are generally yellow, more or less banded with black, or else black with a red tail. They form a small nest of cells just beneath the surface of the not found ground in meadows. A common European species, in England, is the large black, violet-winged CARPENTER-BEE, which makes its nest in a gallery burrowed in a post, where Photos by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S., Regent's Park: SOLITARY AXT. there is a separate compartment for each grub.

(MALE.) (FEMALE.) There are only a few species belonging to the TRUE HIVE-a true aNot ant, but burrowing-wasp, believed BEES found in different parts of the world. They can always be in to nests of humble-bees. be the parasitic distinguished from any of the SOLITARY BEES, some of which much resemble them, by having a single long, narrow cell, about four times as long as broad, running along the front edge of the fore wing. In the solitary bees the corresponding cell is much broader and shorter, rarely more than one and a half times as long as broad, and only occupying a small portion of the front edge of the wing.

Hive-bees have always been looked upon with more interest than most other insects, both on account of the valuable products of honey and wax which they produce, and because of their remarkable habits. They are probably less intelligent than ants, but they are larger; and as all classes of their adult population are winged insects, and have been kept in a domesticated or semi-domesticated state for many centuries, they have lent themselves more readily to observation. The hive-bees live in very large communities, and in a state of nature they make their nests in hollow trees or in crevices of rocks, where they build their waxen cells, store their honey, and rear their young. There are three classes among them, the queen-bee, the female and the mother of the hive; the male, or drone; and the neuter, or worker, which is really an imperfectly developed and usually sterile female. Like other insects, bees pass through a metamorphosis, which in their case is of the description called " complete," for the immature forms of the bee show no resemblance whatever to the winged insect which will finally be perfected. Every bee commences its life in the form of an egg. Each egg is laid by the queen-bee in a separate cell, and in a few days the egg hatches into a white footless maggot, which is carefully tended by the workers, and fed by them with a preparation secreted by the bees, which is carefully graduated, not only according to the age of the grub, but is differently constituted according to the sex and status of the bee; for it is well known that it is in the power of the 1 workers to develop a 'young grub which would otherwise become a sterile worker into a perfect queen-bee, by placing it in a large cell, and rearing it on the same nourishing food which is supplied to those grubs which are intended to become perfect queens. When the grub is full-grown, it spins itself a small silken cocoon, and becomes a pupa, or nymph, as it is called. The pupa somewhat resembles a swathed mummy, for all the external portions of the future bee can be seen outlined in the

Park. hard casing which encloses it. As soon as it Photo by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S.] [Regent's arrives at maturity, it makes its way out HORNET. through the upper end, when the cell is at The largest species of true wasp found in Britain.

Stinging Fouivwinged Insects 707

once prepared by the other bees for a fresh occupant. The newly born bee is at first moist, flabby, and pale-coloured; but in a few hours her skin dries and hardens, when she at once commences her life-long labours, at first tending the young bees and doing other necessary duties in the hive, and then, a fortnight later, going forth with her companions to collect honey and pollen in the meadows and gardens. There is never room for more than one queen-bee in a hive; and the queens, which may be recognised by their longer bodies and shorter wings, have such a mortal hatred of each other that, whenever two of them meet, they will fight, if permitted, until one is killed. But in summer, when young bees are hatching daily in large numbers, and the hive is getting over-populated, the workers do not permit the queens to fight; and finally one of them (usually the old queen in the first instance) works herself up into a great flurry, and rushes out of the hive, attended by several hundred followers, to seek for fresh fields and pastures new. This is " called "; and a strong hive will often throw off as swarming many as four or five swarms in the course of the summer. It is then the object of the bee-keeper to get the queen to enter a new hive, for otherwise the swarm may fly to a distance and be lost; but wherever the queen-bee takes up her abode, her companions will assemble round her, and at once commence the work of building combs and storing up Photo by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S., Regent's Park. honey. The drone, or male bee, is rather larger than the worker, HIVE-BEE.