INSECT VARIETY. 217 



is produced in the bee kind from a sense of fear ; and in proof 

 of this we may hold a musical species by the wings, glue them 

 together, clip or remove them, stop the spiracles, or plunge the 

 body in water, and the subject of the operation continues its 

 piteous or angry whining; but a very similar sound is g-iven 

 out by many individuals when at liberty, and then it is a 

 chronic wayward note of economic interpretation that springs 

 from exuberance of pleasure, or it is a manifestation of delight 

 in maternal labour. Thus the long-bodied queen of the hive 

 produces a clicking with her wings folded in repose, a kind of ring 

 or toot of a small trumpet that John Hunter once found in the 

 lower A of the treble, and the object of this sound is to electrify 

 the workers, according' to Huber, or to call the hive to swarm, 

 according to Kirby. When wandering* in the Western Highlands 

 I have likewise repeatedly noticed worker Humble Bees voluntarily 

 producing a sharp impatient note, when, in essaying the wayside 

 chalices of bramble, wild-rose, tall fox-glove, or other phane- 

 rogam, they chanced to settle on some nectary unpilfered, or 

 more palatable than usual. The first kind I observed producing" 

 this sound was the little red-tipped bee of Northern Europe 

 and Canada, Bomhus lapponicus (Plate IV., Fig. 5), with its 

 baskets laden with bee-bread, meandering over a wild-rose fence 

 on the Duke of ArgylFs estate at Roseneath ; here, too, it 

 often flies in, and suavely murmurs over the opulent blossoms 

 of the conservatories. Afterwards I repeatedly observed this 

 highland music in Arg-yleshire from the yellow-banded, white- 

 tipped 5. lucorum, Lin., a worker-bee kindly determined by the 

 late Frederick Smith, who then informed me its true female is 

 the large vernal Ajns terredris of Linnseus, the commonest of 

 our Bumbles, who takes as its paramour the scientific male with 

 the above designation."^ A somewhat similar plaintive note 



* The following is Mr. Smith's note on this curious subject : — 



"British Museum, Nov. 8, 1877. 



" My dear Sir, — I return the drawing of Bombus lapponicus ; the sketch is 

 not very good, but there can be no doubt about the species. The specimen in 

 the box is the worker of Bombus lucorum, the female of that species is the Apix 

 terrestris of Linnasus. On the Continent many would call the bee in the box 

 B. terrestris, but they have no male for that insect, as they do not unite the true 

 male, B. lucorum, to it. But both of the types are in the Linnasan cabinet, and 

 I have taken the sexes in coitu and also out of their nests repeatedly. — Believe 

 me, yours sincerely, " Fredk. Smith." 



