282 NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY BOOKS. 



Violet Bee (Xylocopa violacea) are indigenous to this country, is 

 proved by Grew, who mentions, in his Rarities of Gresham College, 

 having found a series of cells in the middle of the pith of an old 

 Elder branch, in which they were placed lengthwise, one after 

 another, with a thin boundary between each." As he does not, 

 however, tell us that he was acquainted with the insect which con- 

 structed these, it might as probably be allied to the Ceratina albila- 

 bris, of which Spinola has given so interesting an account in the 

 Annales du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle (x., 236). 



The species whose cells Grew found, may have been the rare 

 Ceratina cserulea, which has been taken on the Viper's Bugloss 

 (Echium vulgar e) near Birch Wood (see Entomological Magazine, 

 iii., 310). In the magazine just mentioned (iii., 413), Mr. Edward 

 Doubleday says that having, in Nov., 1835, cut off a branch of 

 Elder, which projected from a hedge at Epping, " I noticed that 

 the pith of it was removed, and on examining it I found that some 

 insect had evidently entered at the top of the branch, which had 

 apparently been broken off some time previous. The pith she must 

 have removed, for the whole length, about eighteen inches, was di- 

 vided into little cells, in each of which was an oval cocoon, contain- 

 ing a whitish larva. From the many fragments of legs, wings, &c, 

 of Diptera in the cells, these larvae evidently belong to some one of 

 the fossorial Hymenoptera. I think that Reaumur mentions a simi- 

 lar nidus in a dead branch of Oak." It is a pity that Mr. Double- 

 day did not rear the larva, so that the species might have been as- 

 certained. 



Hornet's Nest, p. 79. — (t The Hornet does not build under 

 ground, but in the cavities of trees, or in the thatch, or under the 

 eaves of barns. In the Magazine of Natural History (viii., 628), 

 Mr. J. R. Rowe states, as an exception to the above assertion, his 

 having seen, in July, 1834, a Hornet's nest in a bank of sand and 

 heath. " This nest," he says, " was in a recent state, there being 

 only four or five Hornets, and but few cells; the greater number of 

 the latter occupied by grubs." 



Cells of a Bee Hive, p. 111. — Much has been said on the 

 ingenuity of Bees in constructing cells of an hexagonal form ; and 

 it has been asserted that there is no other form equally saving of 

 room under such circumstances: but in Barrow's Tour through 

 Ireland this opinion is shewn to be erroneous. I have not his work 

 at hand, or would quote his remarks, but the reader will find them 

 somewhere before p. 100 of the first volume. 



The Hive Bee's progress in America, p. 142. — " In this 



