142 FAMILI^. {Melilia. ^'^. c.y 



banks over which bushes are scattered, others bare 

 perpendicular sections, but all seem to delight in a 

 south aspect. They excavate cylindrical burrows 

 from five inches to near a foot in depth, and of sL 

 diameter sufficient only for the Melitta to go in 

 and out at. When they make these holes, they 

 remove the earth grain by grain which forms a 

 small hillock near the mouth ; they sometimes run 

 in a perpendicular, and at others in a horizontal 

 direction. The cell at the bottom of these bur- 

 rows, they replenish with pollen made into a paste 

 with honey, and in this they deposit their eggs. 

 The pollen they carry not only upon the scopa of 

 their posterior tibise, but also upon their flocculus, 

 and the hairs of their metathorax. I have often 

 been highly amused with seeing the female sitting 

 and sunning herself at the mouth of her burrow, 

 ■while the male kept wheeling round and round her. 

 Sometimes very near, and sometimes at a distance^ 

 with great velocity. When the female has com- 

 mitted her egg to the pollen paste she stops the 

 mouth of her burrow very carefully, to prevent the 

 ingress of ants and other insects (A). I suspect that 

 Reaumur's Abeilles Tapissieres appertain at least 

 to this genus. His account of their mode of nidi- 

 - fication is so very curious, that I cannot resist the 

 temptation of inserting an abridgment of it, al- 

 though 1 cannot find that any species, nidificating 



(//.) Vid. Reaum. torn. 6. Mem. 4. p. 93—96. 



in 



