434 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



formed by the insect that inhabits them for its own accom- 

 modation. To the first I shall now call your attention. 



The solitary insects which construct habitations for 

 their future young without any view to their own accom- 

 modation, chiefly belong to the order Hymenojptera, and 

 are principally different species of wild bees. Of these 

 the most simple are built by Colletes^ succmcta, fodiejis, 

 &c. The situation which the parent bee chooses, is 

 either the dry earth of a bank, or the vacuities of stone 

 walls cemented with earth instead of mortar. Having 

 excavated a cylinder about two inches in depth, running 

 usually in a horizontal direction, the bee occupies it with 

 three or four cells about half an inch long, and one-sixth 

 broad, shaped like a thimble, the end of one fitting into 

 the mouth of another. The substance of which these 

 cells are formed is two or three layers of a silky mem- 

 brane, composed of a kind of glue secreted by the animal, 

 resembling gold-beater's leaf, but much finer, and so thin 

 and transparent that the colour of an included object 

 may be seen through them. As soon as one cell is com- 

 pleted, the bee deposits an egg within, and nearly fills it 

 with a paste composed of pollen and honey ; which having 

 done, she proceeds to form another cell, storing it in like 

 manner until the whole is finished, when she carefully 

 stops up the mouth of the orifice with earth. Our coun- 

 tryman Grew seems to have found a series of these nests 

 in a singular situation — 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^. 



» Mclitta. *. a. K. 



'' Grew's Rarities of Gresham Colledge, 154. Kirby, Mon. Ap. 

 Angl. i. 131. Melitta. * a. 



