514 HYMENOPTERA. 



and the limits of this work will not allow me now to enlarge 



o 



upon them. I shall not, therefore, attempt to show how 

 admirably the Hymenoptera are fitted, in the formation of 

 all their parts, for their appointed tasks. If any of my 

 readers are curious to learn this, and to witness for them- 

 selves the various arts, resources, and contrivances resorted 

 to by these insects, let them go abroad in the summer, and 

 watch them during their labors. They will then see the 

 saw-fly making holes in leaves with her double key-hole 

 saws, and the horn-tail boring with her auger into the solid 

 trunks of trees ; they will not fail to observe and admire 

 the untiring scrutiny of the ichneumon-flies, those little busy- 

 bodies, forever on the alert, and prying into every place 

 to find the lurking caterpillar, grub, or maggot, wherein 

 to thrust their eggs ; the curious swellings produced by 

 the gall-flies, and inhabited by their young ; the clay cells 

 of the mud-wasp, plastered against the walls of our houses, 

 each one containing a single egg, together witli a. large 

 number of living spiders, caught and imprisoned therein 

 solely for the use of the little mason's young, which thus 

 have constantly before them an ample supply of fresh pro- 

 visions ; the holes of the stump- wasp, stored with hundreds 

 of horse-flies for the same purpose ; the skill of the leaf- 

 cutter bee in cutting out the semicircular pieces of leaves 

 for her patchwork nest; the thimble-shaped cells of the 

 ground-bee, hidden, in clusters, under some loose stone in 

 the fields, made of little fragments of tempered clay, and 

 stored with bee-bread, the work of many weeks for the 

 industrious laborer ; the waxen cells made by the honey- 

 bee, without any teaching, upon purely mathematical prin- 

 ciples, measured only with her antenna3, and wrought with 

 her jaws and tongue ; the water-tight nests of the hornet 

 and wasp, natural paper-makers from the beginning of time, 

 who are not obliged to use rags or ropes in the formation 

 of their durable paper combs, but have applied to this pur- 

 pose fibres of wood, a material that the art of man has not 



