178 



Marvels of Insect Life. 



provided with a curious apparatus of wings, yet they never exert them when 

 there seems to be the greatest occasion. . . . They are sohtary beings, 

 Hving singly, male and female, each as it may happen. . . . When the 

 males meet the\' will hght fiercely, as I found by some which I put into the crevices 

 of a dry stone wall, where I should have been glad to have made them settle. For 

 though thev seemed distressed by being taken out of their knowledge, yet the 

 hrst that got possession of the chinks would seize on anv other that were intruded 

 upon them with a vast row of serrated fangs. With their strong jaws, toothed 

 like the shears of a lobster's claws, they perforate and round their curious regular 

 cells, having no fore-claws to dig, like the mole-cricket. When taken in hand, 

 I could not but wonder that they never offered to defend themselves, though armed 

 with such formidable weapons. Of such herbs as grow before the mouths of their 

 burrows they eat indiscriminately ; and never, in the daytime, seem to stir more 

 than two or three inches from home. Sitting in the entrance of their caverns they 



chirp all night as well as da\-, from 

 \ / the middle of the month of May to 



V ksjv i .--r^" ^^^^ middle of July ; and in hot 



" "^^ ^' weather, when thev are most 



vigorous, they make the hills 

 echo, and in the stiller hours of 

 darkness may be heard to a con- 

 siderable distance. In the begin- 



A Mosquito-Bee. 



A representative of a family of social bees who fortify their nests with outer 

 walls of clay or resin. The hind-legs are broad and fringed with hairs to enable 

 them to carry this material as well as pollen. 



ning of the season their notes are 

 more faint and inward : but 

 become louder as the summer 

 advances, and so die awa\' again 

 bv degrees." 



This is the cricket that the 

 Portuguese, Spaniards, and 

 Italians delight to keep in neat 

 little cages, where, fed with lettuce 

 or cabbage, they keep up an almost incessant song. The Japanese, too, are fond 

 of keeping these little cage-birds, and the manufacture of the bamboo cages is an 

 ancient industry of such importance that it has, or at least did have formerly, its 

 own trade guild. 



The wood-cricket ^ is of somewhat similar habits to the field-cricket, but is a much 

 smaller Insect — less indeed than the house-cricket. 



Mosquito-Bees. 



The name we ha\'e taken for this group of social bec>s belongs, j)r()i)erly speaking, 

 to only one ^ or two of the numerous species, because of their smallness, and possibj}^ 

 because they bite instead of stinging. This abstention from stinging is due to 

 a defective development of the stinging apparatus. The sting is there, and all 

 its parts are complete, except that the penetrating point is stunted and blunt. 

 Although it is not sharp enough to pierce human skin, it may still be a\-ailable 



^ Nemobius sylvestris. 



- Triyona niDsqiiito. 



