308 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



dual are attended to. For if these sentinels be taken 

 by surprise and destroyed, and their communication 

 with the interior prevented, no provocation will excite 

 the wasps arriving from the fields to attack an in- 

 truder ; but if one escape from within, it immediately 

 proclaims war, and is seemingly commissioned to 

 avenge the invasion of the state, and prepared to 

 sacrifice its life in the execution of its orders*. It 

 further appears to arise from some public order that 

 each individual wasp has its own particular portion 

 of work assigned in the task of building, the extent of 

 this being from an inch to an inch and a half; a cir- 

 cumstance that does not occur among ants, where a bit 

 of wall is usually raised by several individuals coming 

 to it in succession, and who, merely by chancing to 

 pass that way, perceive what is requisite to be done. 

 Amongst the humble-bees the most remarkable 

 circumstance is, the jealous rivalry of the larger 

 female, who has founded a colony for the small fe- 

 males, which she has just before been so careful in 

 rearing. The younger Huber, while watching at 

 midnight the proceedings of a nest which he kept 

 under a bell-glass, observed the bees to be much 

 agitated, and discovered the cause to be the con- 

 struction of a nurse-cell, in which several of the 

 small females were busily engaged. Their mother, 

 upon perceiving their object, came and drove them 

 off; but she, in turn, was attacked by others who 

 came to their assistance, and, pursuing her with the 

 utmost fury and beating- her with their wings, drove 

 her to the bottom of the building. The original 

 builders then returned and finished the cell, and two 

 of them laid eggs in it at the same time. Their mo- 

 ther, however, soon returned to the charge, seeming 

 to be in a great rage at their proceedings, and again 

 chasing away her disobedient and pertinacious chil- 

 * Phil.Trans. fur 1807,p. 242. 



