408 SKETCHES OF INSECTS, 



Before quitting the Hymenoptera, I must advert to the pro- 

 ceedings of the Apathites, or cuckoo bees. These insects are the 

 very reverse of the industrious bees, for they spend their whole 

 time in pleasure and idleness, never collecting honey, making a 

 nest, or attempting any thing of a useful nature. These swindling 

 insects, as we may appropriately term them, very mucli resemble 

 other bees in outward aspect, and seem mistaken for members of 

 the social community. These intruders, when they find it 

 necessary to provide for a young family, lay their eggs in the 

 very same cells where the bees of all the various species before 

 mentioned have provided a store of honey and pollen for their 

 own young grub, little aware of what is to follow. The Qgg of 

 the intruding insect, as in the analogous case of the cuckoo, soon 

 produces an offspring larger and more powerful than the rightful 

 occupant, who is compelled to starve, while the young intruder 

 feasts luxuriantly, and having passed his metamorphosis, proceeds 

 to enact the same remarkable though dishonest part by which he 

 himself entered upon life. 



Rennie mentions an Halictus, a species of bee which is seized 

 upon in a living state by the solitary wasp (Cerceris ornata), who 

 sting them, and place them in holes which they mortar up for 

 the sustenance of their young brood. Many of these wasps, the 

 same writer observes, "are of essential service to agriculturists, 

 by provisioning their nests with destructive weevils (Curculionida), 

 so injurious to orchards and nurseries."* But these wasps, after 

 having been thus successful in their marauding efforts, and after 

 mortaring up their nests as they hope safely, are themselves 

 robbed of the fruits of all their toils, by certain Ichneumons, 

 who with long onipositors pierce their bulwarks, and intrude a 

 parasitical race to devour the grubs of the embryo wasps. 



Such an extraordinary connexion exists among nature's works, 

 that almost every insect appears to have an enemy deputed to 

 w atch its operations, and prevent its too great increase ; and in 

 many cases the spies, if we may so term them, are themselves 

 under espionage. Even the little brilliant green Cynips rosce, 

 that forms the beautiful moss-apples upon roses, has a parasitical 

 foe that penetrates its castle, and makes use of its labours for its 

 own purposes — so that a host of Ichneumonidae often issue from 

 the habitation of the Cynips. The villain spider himself, after 

 a long course of butchery, is not exempt from an hymen- 

 opterous foe, who seizes, stings him, and consigns him to a dark 

 cave, to form a living banquet for his carnivorous young. 



Coleopterous insects (the Beetle tribe) have frequently a longer 

 life allotted them in the larva state than other insects. Thus the 

 cockchafer (Melolontha vulg.), so familiar to us as filling the air 

 in the evenings of a genial May, has attained the fifth year of 

 its existence when its drowsy hum sounds upon the breeze. For 

 the i)revious period it had existed as a grub, feeding upon the 



* Rennie—" Insect Transformations." 



