CARPENTER-BEES. 43 



which is successively to become a grub, a pupa, and a 

 perfect bee. It is obvious, therefore, as she does not lay all 

 her eggs in the same place — as each is separated from the 

 other by a laborious process — that the egg which is first 

 laid will be the earliest hatched ; and that the first perfect 

 insect, being older than its fellows in the same tunnel, will 

 strive to make its escape sooner, and so on of the rest. The 

 careful mother provides for this contingency. She makes 

 a lateral opening at the bottom of the cells ; for the teeth 

 of the young bees would not be strong enough to pierce the 

 outer wood, though they can remove the cemented rings of 

 sawdust in the interior. Eeaumur observed these holes, 

 in several cases ; and he further noticed another external 

 opening opposite to the middle cell, which he supposed 

 was formed, in the first instance, to shorten the distance 

 for the removal of the fragments of wood in the lower half 

 of the building. 



That bees of similar habits, if not the same species as 

 the violet-bee, are indigenous to this country, is proved 

 by Grew, who mentions, in his ' Earities of Gresham 

 College,' having found a series of such cells in the middle 

 of the pith of an elder branch, in which they were placed 

 lengthwise, one after another, with a thin boundary between 

 each. As he does not, however, tell us that he was ac- 

 quainted with the insect which constructed these, it might 

 as probably be allied to the Ceratina aJbilalris, of which 

 Spinola has given so interesting an account in the ' Annales 

 du Museum d'Histoire Xaturelle ' (x. 286). This noble 

 and learned naturalist tells us, that one evening he per- 

 ceived a female ceratina alight on the branch of a bi amble, 

 partly withered, and of which the extremity had been 

 broken ; and, after resting a moment, suddenly disappear. 

 On detaching the branch, he found that it was perforated , 

 and that the insect was in the very act of excavating a 

 nidus for her eggs. He forthwith gathered a bundle of 

 branches, both of the bramble and the wild-rose, similarly 

 perforated, and took them home to examine them at leisure. 

 Upon inspection, he fuund that the nests were furnished 



