i8 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



of Springfield, Mass., wrote us, that he had a plant of the same 

 species which had caught a nuoiber of moths of several species, and 

 that in some cases only the heads and tongues of the moths were left, 

 and he attributed this dismemberment to birds, but wrote in the same 

 letter that his father had seen bees sting the moths while alive and 

 struggling. He sent me one of the moths, which proved to be a 

 Plusia precationis, the same species as we had observed in Providence, 

 and a honey bee {Apis viellifica) which had been seen by his father to 

 attack the moths, and which had a pollen mass of the same plant 

 attached to one of its fore legs. On writing Mr. Thompson that his 

 father's observations were quite new, the hive bee not being known to 

 be carnivorous, beyond its well-known habit of stinging and killing 

 the males of its own species and the bee moths invading its cells, his 

 father. Rev. L. Thompson, of North VVobiirn, Mass., a careful ob- 

 server, kindly prepared the following .statement : 



" I cannot undertake to give an account of my observations of the 

 plant, moths and bees, concerning which inquiry is made, from the 

 standpoint of a scientist, which I do not claim to be, but after pretty 

 close watching, continued for many days, I feel quite confident of the 

 general correctness of the following statement : 



" Early in September, of the present year, as I made one of my 

 daily visits to the plant, to me unknown before, \\\^ Physianthus albens, 

 or Arauja, I noticed among the many moths that had been caught in 

 the flowers, a considerable number of tongues still in the traps, while 

 all, or nearly all, else belonging to the recent captives had disappear- 

 ed. While I stood gazing, my attention was arrested by two or three 

 bees buzzmg immediately around ns many entrapped moths that were 

 alive and struggling to get away. Every moment or two, the bee 

 suddenly and furiously darted upon the prisoner and seemed to sting 

 it despite its desperate efforts to escape. The onset was generally in- 

 stantaneous, but was repeated again and again, and, after the moth 

 became still and apparently lifeless, the bee settled upon it, and, if 

 my eyes did not greatly deceive me, began to devour it. I had previous- 

 ly noticed the tongues but supposed the bodies of the moths had been 

 eaten by birds, though I had not actuallv seen it done. I cannot therefore 

 positively assert what seemed to me the f;-ict at the time, though I had 

 no other thought, and the fact that so many of the moths had actually 

 disappeared, leaving only their tongues, and, in some cases, other 

 fragments of their bodies, in the shape of legs chnging to bits of 

 casing or skin, satisfied me that the bees had really feasted on animal 

 food as well as upon the nectar of surrounding flowers. 



"I did not suppose it to be the honey bee at the time, but a kind 

 of wasp, such as or similar to that whose nest I had sometimes found 

 in sodded banks or terraces and looked upon as an architectural won- 

 der. Yet I did not examine it, and can only say that I saw many, or 

 supposed T did, upon a bed of Nasturtiums and other flowers, a few 

 feet distant from the Physianthus. 



" I think T have found as manv as three or four different kinds of 



