APIS. (**. c. 2. «.) 245 



Considerably larger, but the abdomen of the acu- 

 leates instead of being cordate is oval, and its dor- 

 sal segments have no white marginal fringe. The 

 anus also of the males is emarginate. The last 

 mentioned author informs us that ^. Ugniseca 

 commits great ravages in oak plantations i trees of 

 that kind, apparently healthy, at Birdbrook in 

 Essex, being completely perforated by it, and filled 

 with its centunculi : but it does not confine itself 

 solely to the oak, for upon the tenth of September^ 

 1799, npon observing a bee belonging to the pre- 

 sent subdivision enter the trunk of a putrescent 

 elm, I obtained leave to take the tree down ; upon 

 opening it, I discovered, in the center, the nest, 

 and also one of the bees, which proved to be the 

 one now before us. The nest was made of elm 

 leaves, each cell was about an inch and a quarter 

 in length, and not quite half an inch in diameter ; 

 a circumstance which furnishes an additional proof 

 that this insect is distinct from j4. centuncularisj 

 for the cells of the latter are not an inch in lengthy 

 and scarcely the fourth of an inch in diameter* 

 The tree which ^. Ugniseca had selected to con- 

 tain her nest, was beginning to decay at the heart, 

 here she had bored a channel whose diameter was 

 adapted to that necessary for her cells, the direc-* 

 tion of which was according to the state of the 

 wood at the center, following the puti-escent vein. 

 Plot, in his history of Staffordshire, makes mention 

 of one of these bees as constructing its nest in a 

 decaying crab tree. 



R a • 45. A. 



