APIAN CARPENTRY. 319 



carpenter wasp."* It consists merely of a tunnel or gallery, 

 excavated perpendicularly in a piece of wood, softened some- 

 what by decay and divided into separate chambers (two of 

 them) by partitions, formed of the saw-dust or grains of wood 

 produced in excavation. One of these nurseries has an 

 occupant (once a living one), a young wasp in its grubhood, 

 enclosed in a cocoon of its own spinning, and surrounded by 

 remains of flies and caterpillars, its maternally-provided store. 



In this nursery of a solitary bee, we are presented with an 

 example of more finished carpentry and more laborious con- 

 struction. It is wrought in a material like the last, in a piece 

 of wood, namely, somewhat softened by decay, part, probably, 

 of a post or pale. The tunnel, which is more square than 

 round, is smooth within, chiselled as if by the tool of a veri- 

 table carpenter, and divided into as many as six separate cells 

 or compartments, of which the partitions are no thicker than 

 a card, and formed, not of sawdust (that having been carefully 

 removed), but of kneaded clay, fetched as laboriously by the 

 little builder, who herein shows herself an adept in masonry as 

 \vell as in her own peculiar art. Within these cells, or some 

 of them, is a portion of pollen, that more innocent or inno- 

 cently-gathered food, with which the bee-mother supplies her 

 brood, in lieu of the living larder provided by the maternal 

 wasp.f 



We are handling now what may be looked on as a perfect 



* Of the genus Eumenes. t See Vignette. 



VOL. III. U 



