200 SANTAREM. Cuap. VIII. 
provision their nests with spiders, a third (T. aurifrons) with small cater- 
pillars. Their habits are similar to those of the Pelopzeus: namely, 
they carry off the clay in their mandibles, and have a different song 
when they hasten away with the burthen, from that which they sing 
whilst at work. Trypoxylon albitarse, which is a large black kind, three 
quarters of an inch in length, makes a 
tremendous fuss whilst building its cell. 
It often chooses the walls or doors of 
chambers for this purpose, and when 
two or three are at work in the same 
place their loud humming keeps the 
“Ss. house in an uproar. The cell is a 
tubular structure about three inches in 
length. T. aurifrons, a much smaller 
species, makes a neat little nest shaped like a carafe ; building rows of 
them together in the corners of verandahs. 
But the most numerous and interesting of the clay artificers are 
the workers of a species of social bee, the Melipona fasciculata. The 
Meliponz in tropical America take the place of the true Apides, to 
which the European hive-bee belongs and which are here unknown; 
they are generally much smaller insects than the hive-bees, and have no 
sting. The M. fasciculata is about a third shorter than the Apis 
mellifica; its colonies are composed of an immense number of indi- 
viduals. The workers are generally seen collecting pollen in the same 
way as other bees, but great numbers are employed gathering clay. 
The rapidity and precision of their movements whilst thus engaged are 
wonderful. ‘They first scrape the clay with their mandibles; the small 
portions gathered are then cleared by the anterior paws and passed to 
the second pair of feet, which in their turn convey them to the large 
foliated expansions of the hind shanks, which are adapted normally in 
bees, as every one knows, for the collection of pollen. The middle 
feet pat the grow- 
ing pellets of 
mortar on the 
hind legs to keep 
them in a com- 
pact shape as the 
particles are suc- 
cessively added. 
The little hods- 
men soon have : 2 Beene eee 
as much as they Melipona Bees gathering clay. 
can carry, and 
they then fly off. Iwas for some time puzzled to know what the bees 
did with the clay; but I had afterwards plenty of opportunity for 
ascertaining. They construct their combs in any suitable crevice in 
trunks of trees or perpendicular banks, and the clay is required to build 
up a wall so as to close the gap, with the exception of a small orifice 
for their own entrance and exit. Most kinds of Melipone are in this 
way masons as well as workers in wax and pollen-gatherers. One 

Cells of Trypoxylon aurifrons. 






