TPIE ANIMAL LIFE OF THE GROUP. 415 



gent creatures, and are excellent material for the student who has the time 

 and a taste for experimenting with animals. For example, they are greatly 

 disturbed by a change in the color of objects near where they are working. If 

 a piece of red cloth is tied over the door knob they have great trouble in 

 finding the keyhole when they return with mud, but if the clotli i.s removed in 

 their absence they have no trouble in locating it. 



The Hawaiian solitary bees, of which there are at least sixty species, be- 

 longing to the genus Nesoprosopis, are not readily identified by the layman, 

 nor are they easily separated in the field from the wasps. Like the genus of 

 wasps just discussed, they vary greatly in habits. Some nest in the ground, 

 some in dead standing timber and various unusual places, and are distributed 

 from the coast to above the upper forest. 



Of the typical or long-tongued bees.^^ we find five species so far occurring 

 in Hawaii. Of these the conspicuous carpenter bee'" and the useful honey 

 bee^^ have already been mentioned. The three remaining species belong to a 

 single genus i* and are characterized as leaf-cutting bees. The common name 

 is given them owing to their ciu'ious habit of making the thimble-shaped nests 

 for their young out of neatly-cut circular pieces of fresh leaves, which they 

 pack away in cells, often in holes in the woodwork, or in curled-up leaves of 

 the cocoanut palm. Leaves when mutilated by these bees look as though small 

 gun wads had been cut from them. The Avork of the wad-cutting bee is often 

 mistaken for that of the Japanese beetle, which, while it feeds on the leaves, 

 does not cut out the leaf in a regular pattern. 



The Beetles. 



Coming to the great order of beetles, ^" we find it represented in the Ha- 

 waiian insect fauna b.v more than forty families, embracing hundreds of pre- 

 cinetive and introduced species. All of the members of this extensive order 

 are easily recognized in the adult stage, as the.v have a pair of horny wings 

 that meet in a straight line down the back, beneath which is a single pair of 

 membraneous wings neatly folded away. The earwig -" is the only other 

 order occurring in Hawaii that at all closely resembles them, and the earwigs 

 are easily recognized bj- the presence of a pair of forceps-like api)eudages at 

 the posterior end of the body. 



In general it ma.v be said that a gi'eat per cent of Ihe lieetles found in 

 Hawaii are species that occur in no other place, ilost of the species are small, 

 many of them being almost microscopic in size, and as a rule the indivaduals 

 of a species are not numerous, hence they are difficult to obtain. The collector 

 soon learns that their habits vary greatly in the different families and even 

 among the species of the same genera, so that in searching for specimens every 

 possible situation must be examined. The water, earth, sand, crevices in the 

 solid rock, under deca.ving animal and vegetable matter, under stones, in the 



-" Euplexopte 



