68 Insect Architecture. 



the intrusion of depredators, proceeds to form her nest, 

 the exterior walls of which she forms of the wool of 

 pubescent plants, such as rose-campion (Lychnis coronaria), 

 the quince (Pyrus cydonia), cats-ears (Stachys lunata), &c. 

 " It is very pleasant," says Mr. White, of Selborne, " to see 

 with what address this insect strips off the down, running 

 from the top to the bottom of the branch, and shaving it. 

 bare with all the dexterity of a hoop-shaver. When it has 

 got a vast bundle, almost as large as itself, it flies away, 

 holding it secure between its chin and its fore-legs."* The 

 material is rolled up like a ribbon ; and we possess a spe- 

 cimen in which one of these rolls still adheres to a rose- 

 campion stem, the bee having been scared away before 

 obtaining her load. 



The manner in which the cells of the nest are made 

 seems not to be very clearly understood. M. Latreille 

 says, that, after constructing her nest of the down of 

 quince-leaves, she deposits her eggs, together with a store 

 of paste, formed of the pollen of flowers, for nourishing the 

 grubs. Kirby and Spence, on the other hand, tell us, that 

 " the parent bee, after having constructed her cells, laid an 

 egg in each, and filled them with a store of suitable food, 

 plasters them with a covering of vermiform masses, appa- 

 rently composed of honey and pollen ; and having done 

 this, aware, long before Count Rumford's experiments, what 

 materials conduct heat most slowly," she collects the down 

 from woolly plants, and " sticks it upon the plaster that 

 covers her cells, and thus closely envelops them with a 

 warm coating of down, impervious to every change of 

 temperature." '* From later observations," however, they 

 are " inclined to think that these cells may possibly, as in 

 the case of the humble-bee, be in fact formed by the larva 

 previously to becoming a pupa, after having eaten the 

 provision of pollen and honey with which the parent bee 

 had surrounded it. The vermicular shape, however, of the 

 masses with which the cases are surrounded, does not seem 



* Naturalist's Calendar, p. 100. 



