PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS ' HSl 



autumn, but few have appeared. Mr. Knight observed this in 180G, and 

 supposes it to be caused by a failure of niales.^ 1 have since more than 

 once made the same observation ; and Major Moor, as well as myself^ 

 noticed it in the year 1815. What took place here in the following year 

 may in some degree account for it. Though the summer had been very 

 wet, and one may ahnost say winterly, there were in the neighbourhood 

 in which I reside abundance of wasps at the usual time ; but except on 

 some few warm days, in which they were very active, benumbed by the 

 cold, they were crawling about on the floors of my house, and seemed 

 unable to fly. In this vicinity numbers make their nests in the banks of 

 the river. In the beginning of the month of October there was a very con- 

 siderable inundation, after which not a single wasp was to be seen. Tiie 

 continued wet that |)roduces an inundation may also destroy those nests 

 that are out of the reach of the waters ; and perhaps this cause may have 

 operated in those years above alluded to in, which the aj;pearance of the 

 workers in the summer and autumn did not correspond with the large 

 numbers of females observed in the spring. 



In ordinary seasons, in the month lately mentioned, October, wasps 

 seem to became less savage and sanguinary ; for even flies, of which earlier 

 in the summer they are the pitiless destroyers, may be seen to enter their 

 nests with impunity. It is then, probabl}', that they begin to be first 

 affected by the approach of the cold season, when nature teaches them it 

 is useless longer to attend to their young. They themselves all perish, 

 except a few of the females, upon the first attack of frost. 



Reaumur, from whom (see the sixth Memoir of his last volume) most of 

 these observations are taken, put the nests of wasps under glass-hives, and 

 succeeded so effectually in reconciling these little restless creatures to them 

 that they carried on their various works under his eye; and if you feel 

 disposed to follow his example, I have no doubt you will throw light 

 u[)()n many parts of their history, concerning which we are now in dark- 

 ness. 



Having given you some idea, imperfect indeed from the want of mate- 

 rials, of the societies of wasps, I must next draw up for you the best 

 account I can of those of the humble-bees? These form a kind of inter- 

 mediate link between the wasps and the hive-bees, collecting honey indeed 

 and making wax, but constructing their combs and cells without the geo- 

 metric precision of the latter, and of a more rude and rustic kind of 

 architecture; and distinguished from both, though they approach nearer to 

 the bees, by the extreme hairiness of their bodies. 



The popnlation of a humble-bees' nest may be divided into four orders 

 of individuals : the large females ; the small females ; the males; and the 

 workers. 



The large females, like the female wasps, are the original fovmdcrs of 

 their republics. They are often so large, that by the side of the small ones 

 or the workers, which in every other respect they exactly resemble, they 

 look like giants o|)posed to pigmies. They are excluded from the \)u\^a. 

 in the autumn ; and pair in that season, with males produced from the 

 eggs of the small flimales. They pass the winter underground, and, as 

 appears from an observation of M. P. Huber, in a particular apartment, 



> Phil. Trans, for 1807, 243. 8 Bombus Apis * *. e. 2. K. 



