200 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



weather, having completed their larval growth, enclose themselves in cells or co- 

 coons, and in a dormant state await the revivifying influences of spring before 

 entering upon their metamorphose?. A very considerable number of insects brave 

 the winter in their perfect or final form, in a state of such profound torpor that they 

 are not only insensible to cold, but can with difficulty be aroused to unseasonable 

 activity by artificial heat. Certain species of caterpillars and young grasshop- 

 pers have such adaptable constitutions that they do not mind beirg frozen until 

 they are as brittle as an icicle, and if they escape being broken, will thaw out in the 

 spring, begin feeding with great voracity, and complete their life cycle without ex- 

 periencing any ill consequences from the boreal interruption to their development. 



All the social hymenoptera, such as bees, wasps and ants, as well as many soli- 

 tary species of these groups, hibernate in their perfect form : that is, the females 

 do. Nature is rather hard on the males, granting them but a brief span of life 

 during the autumn, after which they are suflered to perish. 



The large, enclosed paper nests of the bald-faced hornet {Vespa maculata) would 

 seem to offer a fairly comfortable winter home for the insects, but we soon learn 

 that these are for summer use only. Indeed, they are the scene of a mimic tragedy 

 every year upon the advent of cold weather, for as soon as the first frost falls, such 

 of the waFp larvae or pupas as are still in the cells are dragged out, stung to death 

 and cast upon the ground, and the perfect insects, which so tenderly cared for and 

 fed their young for ?o many months and builded so paitently on the walls and gal- 

 leries and cells of their ingenious home, now sail away remorselessly in the Indian 

 summer sunshine to look up a very dilFerent retreat for winter— most content, 

 apparently, if they can find entrance through an attic window, so that they may 

 hide behind the rafters or near the chimneys. Anta retire to the lower or inner 

 galleries of their formicaries and become torpid like the wasps. They are the only 

 insects, except the honey-bees, which continue from year to year in the same loca- 

 tion, unless the colony is by some means broken up. If we wish to find them we 

 have only to dig deeply into some little mourd where we have observed their 

 activity during summer, or to strip the bark from a rotting log or stump, and we 

 shall see them reposing in groups in the narrow galleries which they had previously 

 carved or excavated with their jaws. 



Many of the solitary bees creep into the hollow stems of weeds, or pass the 

 winter as pupae, in silken or waxen cells securely hidden in some cavity or aperture. 

 A friend recently sent me the contents of a door-lock which had refused to "work," 

 and was found to have every spice packed with the little thimble-shaped cells 

 of the Leaf-cutter bee— the cells being formed of round and oblong sections of 

 clover leaves, placed layer upon layer, and containing each some fragments of bee 

 bread and a round, silken cocoon within which reposed a bee pupa. 



Parasitic Hymenoptera for the most part shelter during winter within the body 

 wall or cocoon of the insect they have destroyed. The vegetable feeding species 

 of this same order, the saw-flies and gall-flies, are mostly found at this season in 

 the larva state, protected within earthen cells, or embedded in little pits in the 

 substance of the unnatural growths which they cause on trees and shrubbery. 



The house-fly, as we well know, will, in spite of all our precautions, contrive 

 to find a warm corner indoors, and, on sunny afternoons, comes out of its seclusion 

 to greet us with a lively buzz and to take a peep from the windows at the outer 

 world. The blue-bottle and other meat-flies and most of the larger Diptera hiber- 

 nate in similar fashion. So also do mosquitoes, but these do not reveal themselves 

 until we find ourselves persecuted by the ''May mosquitoes," which are often for 

 a few days unseasonably annoying. 



