17 
TUESDAY, MARCH 4rx. 
Insect Architects and Gngineers, 
BY 
Mr. FRED ENOCK, F.G.S., &c., 
IN 
MUSIC ROOM, ROYAL PAVILION. 
ry. men could keep a roomful of Brighton people interested 
for two hours, listening to descriptions of just two varieties 
of insects. For a triumph like this Mr. Enock owes much to 
his really wonderful illustrations. With loving care for the 
minutest detail, he has drawn his subjects from life under the 
microscope, in their natural colours, and has perfected a series 
of lantern slides illustrative of insect life which must be almost, 
if not entirely, unique. In many cases, by most ingenious 
mechanical processes, he so manipulates the slides as to show 
the actual movements of the insect of which he is treating. It 
was of two insects, the leaf-cutter bee and the tiger beetle, that 
Mr. Enock set himself to talk, taking the former as a specimen 
of the insect architect, and the latter as an insect engineer. The 
leaf-cutter bee, whose Latin family name is Hymenoptera, 
receives its English name from its way of walking off with 
circular or oval slices of the leaves of various plants,—with a 
preference for Marshal Niel roses,—to make cells withal. He, 
or rather she, burrows a little tunnel in sand or any other 
suitable soft substance, and with the bits of pilfered leaves 
builds up in a wonderful way first one cell and then another, 
filling each cell with honey as it is completed, and laying one 
egg, so that the grub, when hatched, can feed upon the honey 
until it develops to the chrysalis stage, and thence to the bee. 
The whole history of the leaf-cutter bee’s life Mr. Knock showed 
by his wonderful slides, from the act of cutting off the pieces 
of leaf, to the final exit of the young bee from its tunnel to the 
open air. Mr. Enock waxed enthusiastic over the bee’s delicate 
antenne, in which are situated its nerves of smell, hearing, and 
touch, and over its simple and compound eyes, while he grew fairly 
ecstatic on the subject of its hair. Showing a portrait of a male 
bee with its tongue out, he said it might be a satisfaction 
to some of his audience to know that the tongue of the male bee 
was longer than that of the female, but on the other hand the 
