50 ixsECT akchitecturp:. 



without success, to watch the bees, when loaded with down, 

 to their nests. The bee may be readily known from its 

 congeners, bf its being about the size of the hive-bee, but 

 more broad and flattened, blackish-brown above, with a row 

 of six yellow or white spots along each side of the rings, 

 very like the rose-leaf cutter, and having the belly covered 

 Avith yellowish -brown hair, and the legs fringed witli long 

 hairs of a rather lighter colour. 



A common bee belonging to the family of upholsterers 

 is called the rose-leaf cutter (^Afegachile ceiituncularis, Latr.). 

 The singularly ingenious habits of this bee have long 

 attracted the attention of naturalists ; but the most interest- 

 ing description is given by Reaumur. So extraordinary does 

 the construction of their nests appear, that a French gar- 

 dener having dug up some, and believing them to be the 

 work of a magician, who had placed them in his garden 

 with evil intent, sent them to Paris to his master, for advice 

 as to what should be done hj way of exorcism. On applying 

 to the Abbe Xollet, the owner of the garden was soon per- 

 suaded that the ne.sts in question were the work of insects ; 

 and M. Reaumur, to wliom they were subsequently sent, 

 found them to be the nests of one of the upholsterer-bees, 

 and probably of the rose-leaf cutter, though the nests in 

 question were made of the leaves of the mountain ash 

 (^Pyrm aucuparia). 



The rose-leaf cutter makes a cylindrical hole in a beaten 

 pathway, for the sake of more consolidated earth (or in the 

 cavities of walls or decayed wood), from six to ten inches 

 deep, and does not throw the eaith dug out from it into a 

 heap, like the Andrense.* In this she constructs several 

 cells about an inch in length, shaped like a thimble, and 

 made of cuttings of leaves (not petals), neatly folded 

 together, the bottom of one thimble-shaped cell being 

 inserted into the mouth of the one below it, and so on in 

 succession. 



It is interesting to observe the manner in which this 

 bee procures the materials for forming the tapestry of 

 * See p. oG. 



