58 HA.BITS OF SOLITARY-BEES. 



of house-building. In the pleasant pages of Kirby and Spence 

 they stand arranged as Clothier-Bees, Carpenter-Bees, Llason- 

 Bees, Upholsterer-Bees, and Leaf-Cutting Bees, to which amplo 

 list of Bee tradesmen Mr. Rennie, in his " Insect Architecture," 

 very properly adds the Mining-Bees. These designations arc of 

 course somewhat fanciful, though there is sufficient foundation in 

 fact to allow of their use ; and there is this further resemblance 

 between the human and the bee* worker, that when, from local 

 circumstances, one trade fails, or cannot be followed, the in- 

 dustrious insect can, as easily as the industrious man, turn his 

 hand to another : the carpenter becomes mason, or the mason, 

 miner. In the situations chosen for the construction of the 

 nest, and the manner in which the nest is formed, there is au 

 almost endless diversity. The Mining-Bees form their excava- 

 tions very commonly in the sunny sides of clifis and sandbanks, 

 or in hard and beaten pathways this latter fact having been 

 noticed so long ago as the days of Homer. The Carpenter-Bees 

 tunnel out old posts aud railings, or the decaying trunks of trees. 

 The Masons build their nests in the holes of trees and the cracks 

 of walls, and sometimes in such curious places as the empty shells 

 of snails, that lie half-buried in hedge-banks. Some of the 

 smaller species tunnel out the pith of bramble stems ; while 

 others find a convenient abode in the hollow tubes of straw 

 thatch. No place that can in any way be made available comes 

 amiss ; and he who " loves to hear the wild bees' hum," and 

 follows them in their various haunts to study the details of their 

 history, will often be struck with their strange and wonderful 

 devices in obviating difficulties, and accommodating themselves lo 

 circumstances. 



In the summer of 1857 we discovered a most singular habit 

 in one of the Carpenter-Bees, which, so far as was known at the 

 time, had never before been observed. The Bee in question is a 

 little fellow, with a thin, elongated body, and rejoices in the name 

 Chelostoma florisomne, which, however frightful it may look in 

 entomological Latin, is both pretty and appropriate when rendered 

 into English, as the " lip- mouthed flower sleeper." The first part 

 of this name speaks for itself, and the second is thus explained : 

 Our little Bee is of a convivial turn, and is given to staying out 

 at nights. Occasionally, therefore, of a summer evening, instead 

 of returning home to the old post or rail in which his nest is 



