ANTHOPHORA. 241 



tlie Melittobia , named thus from its preying upon bees; 

 it,, like the majority of its tribe, is exceedingly minute, 

 and of a shining dark green metallic colour. It is pe- 

 culiar from having its lateral eyes simple, and in possess- 

 ing besides three ocelli. The other genus is Monodonto- 

 meris, an equally small insect, which, although living 

 upon the larva of Anthophora, is equally preyed upon by 

 that of the Melittobia. The universal scourge, Forficula, 

 is a great devastator of these colonies, where, of course, 

 it revels in its destructive propensities. 



The insects of the second division I have never been 

 able to track to their burrows, but have always caught 

 them either on the wing or on flowers, especially upon 

 those of the common Mallow, and I have found both spe- 

 cies all round London. They are said also to frequent the 

 Dead Nettle (Lamium purpureum). The A. quadrima- 

 culata burrows in banks, and its processes are scarcely 

 different from those of the preceding species, only its 

 habits are solitary. In flight it is exceedingly rapid, 

 and thus much resembles Saropoda. But the A. furcata 

 bores into putrescent wood, in which it forms a longi- 

 tudinal pipe subdivided into nine or ten oval divisions, 

 separated from each other by agglutinated scrapings of 

 the same material, very much masticated, the closing of 

 each forming a sharp sort of cornice ; each of these cells 

 is about half an inch in length, and three-tenths of an 

 inch in diameter, the separations between them being 

 about a line thick. These pipes or cylinders run parallel 

 to the sides of the wood thus bored, an angle being 

 made both at its commencement and its termination, 

 and thus the latter permits the ready escape of the de- 

 veloped imago nearest that extremity, which being the 

 first deposited, that cell being the first constructed, it 



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