IQQ FAMILI^. {Jpis. **. d. 2. a.) 



square; besides several other circumstances whicl) 

 will appear upon a comparison of their several 

 characters. Their mode of nidification is various, 

 which makes me suspect that there may be room 

 for another subdivision, but this I have not yet 

 been able to trace out. ^pis retusa makes its nest 

 with us in hard banks of gravel or clay, containing 

 several cells, of an oval or elliptical shape, covered 

 within with a thin white membrane, each being 

 about three-fourths of an inch in length, and not 

 quite half an inch in diameter ; they are placed in 

 no regular order. In Northamptonshire, as we 

 learn from Ray, it makes its cells in stone walls. 

 I found it myself in great abundance frequenting 

 the walls built with Kettering stone at Wansford 

 and UfFord in that county ; and once, at Norwich, 

 1 was much amused at seeing a female, one sunny 

 morning, very busily employed upon a brick wall, 

 and exerting all her might to pull the mortar from 

 betv/een the bricks ; but whether this was to pre- 

 pare a place for a cell, or only a sheltered cavity 

 to pass the night in, according to the observation 

 of Rossi, I could not ascertain. Another species, 

 belonging to this subdivision, nidificates in a man- 

 ner similar to ^pis violacea, in pieces of putrescent 

 wood. In these they bore a longitudinal pipe, 

 which they divide into nine or ten oval chambers, 

 separated from each other by a sharp kind of cor- 

 nice, which form the shells of an equal number of 

 oval cells ; these are made of the scrapings of the 



wood 



