-iod HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



use, but for the convenience of its future young : an<! 

 those which are formed by the insect that inhabits them 

 for its own accommodation. To the first I shall now 

 call your attention. 



The solitary insects which construct habitations for 

 their future young without any view to their own ac- 

 commodation, chiefly belong to the order Hymeno- 

 ptera, and are principally different species of wild bees. 

 Of these the most simple are built by 31. succincta^fo- 

 diais, and other species of the first family of the genus 

 Melitta, Kirby (Colletes, Latr.). The situation which 

 the parent bee chooses, is either the dry earth of a bank, 

 or the vacuities of stone walls cemented with earth in- 

 stead of mortar. Having excavated a cylinder al^out 

 two inches in depth, running usually in a horizontal 

 direction, the bee occupies it ^\ith three or four cells 

 about half an inch long, and one-sixth broad, shaped 

 like a thimble, the end of one fitting into the mouth of 

 another. The substance of which these cells are formed 

 is two or three layers of a silky membrane, composed 

 of a kind of glue secreted by the animal, resembling 

 gold-beater's leaf, but much finer, and so thin and 

 transparent that the colour of an included object may 

 be seen through them. As soon as one cell is com- 

 pleted, the bee deposits an egg within, and nearly fills 

 it with a paste composed of pollen and honey ; which 

 having done, she proceeds to form another cell, storing- 

 it in like manner until the whole is finished, when she 

 carefully stops up the mouth of the orifice with earth. 

 Our countryman Grew seems to have found a series 

 of these nests in a singular situation-^— the middle of 



