36 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



could be discovered in tlieir structure similar to that 

 whidi was apparent in the nest found in the wall of 

 Greenwich Park. 



Eeaumur mentions another sort of mason-bee, which 

 selects a small cavity in a stone, in which she forms her 

 nest of garden-mould moistened with gluten, and afterwards 

 closes the whole with the same material. 



Minixg-Bees. 

 A ver}^ small sort of bees (Andrencp) , many of them not 

 larger than a house-fly, dig in the ground tubulai' galleries 

 little wider than the diameter of their own bodies. Samouelle 

 says, that all of them seem to prefer a southern aspect ; but 

 we have found them in banks facing the east, and even the 

 north. Immediately above the spot where we have de- 

 scribed the mason-bees quarrying the clay, we observed 

 several holes, about the diameter of the stalk of a tobacco- 



Cell of Mining-Bee (.Andrena^.—Ahout half the natural size. 



pipe, into which those little bees were seen passing. The 

 clay here was very hard ; and on passing a straw into the 

 hole as a director, and digging down for six or eight inches, 

 a very smooth circular gallery was found, tenninating in a 

 thimble-shaped horizontal chamber, almost at right angles 

 to the entrance and nearly" twice as wide. In this chamber 

 there was a ball of bright 3'ellow pollen, as round as a 

 garden pea, and rather larger, upon which a small white 

 grub was feeding ; and to which the mother bee had 

 been adding, as she had just entered a minute before with 

 her thighs loaded with iiollen. That it was not the male, 

 the load of pollen determined ; for the male has no appa- 

 ratus for collecting or transporting it. The whole labour 

 of digging the nest and providing food for the young is 



