SOCIAL INSECTS. 641 



part of our thinking is carried on in ideas of spoken words, a very- 

 common form of ideal automatism is tlie inner voice. A por- 

 tion of the patient's word ideas rise to a higher level than usual, 

 resist his will, and often say things which strike him as strange 

 and foreign to his own acknowledged thoughts. For the sake of 

 completeness I must refer to this type of automatism, although 

 space forbids me to discuss it in detail. 



SOCIAL INSECTS. 



By L. N. BADENOCH. 



IT is well known that some bees are social and form nests where 

 their broods are reared, workers existing who provide daily 

 for the young. In architectural skill these social kinds do not 

 always hold a foremost place. The cells composing their nests 

 vary in shape from the perfectly hexagonal, as in the hive, to those ' 

 which are less regularly six-sided, until in the bumblebees' homes 

 they are not in the least like the delicate, sharply defined struc- 

 tures of the true honeybee, but are oval and isolated or dis- 

 tributed almost at random. 



Leaving the hive bee out of the question, the bumbles {Bombi) 

 alone construct social communities in England ; they constitute 

 the nearest ally, as regards its habits, of the true honeybee in 

 North America, which is especially rich in species. Their econ- 

 omy is simple ; their colonies begin, enlarge, and end like wasps. 

 They live for one season, perishing with the cold of autumn, 

 except a few queens, which hide themselves away in utter solitude 

 in sheltered and convenient spots, and, awaking with the warmth 

 of spring, lay the foundation of a new swarm. In the ordinary 

 course of things these queens do not survive a second winter. 



Parasitic bees (Apathus) so closely resemble the bumbles that 

 it requires long practice to distinguish them easily. Little is 

 known of the parasite, other than that it is found in the nests of 

 its hosts, at whose expense it apparently lives, after the manner 

 of the cuckoo. It has no pollen basket, showing that it can not 

 collect' food, and its young must feed upon the stores of their 

 hosts, and its jaws seem unadapted for building. Flies and sev- 

 eral beetles also prey upon the bees, and the larvae of moths con- 

 sume their honey and waxen cells. 



In the tropics the honeybee is replaced by the MeliponcB and 

 Trigones; which are generally minute and almost stingless, and 

 live in vast colonies. The former construct a comb for their 

 young, resembling that of the hive, but of one layer of cells, 

 while the honey cells are irregular and occasionally attain a great 



VOL. XLIX. 51 



