CHAP. I. INSTINCT OP BEES. 33 



must ever hold over them an obvious and irresistible 

 superiority. 



(38.) The Apis Muscorum Lin., and some other species 

 of humble bees, surmount their dwellings with a roof of 

 moss : but M. P. Huber having placed the nest of these 

 insects under a bell glass, and stuffed all the interstices 

 with a linen cloth, the bees, being unable to procure 

 their accustomed material, took the cloth ; tore thread 

 from thread ; corded it, with their feet, into a felted 

 mass ; and applied it to the same purpose.* Bees close 

 up the cells of their grubs, before the latter assume the 

 pupa state. Bonnet inclosed a swarm in a flat glass 

 hive, the form of which occasioned their cells to be less 

 than their ordinary depth, so that, in a few days' time, 

 he perceived, that, being too small for them to perform 

 their usual manoeuvres, holes were made in the lids, 

 through which the grubs were projected. His curiosity 

 was excited to see what the bees would do in this 

 emergency ; and he was greatly delighted, when he 

 beheld them, without displacing a single grub, close the 

 cells afresh, with lids more convex than usual, which at 

 once gave the additional depth that was required.t 



(39.) In other cases, bees have been known, after 

 commencing their comb too near an adjoining one, ap- 

 parently to discover their error, and to give the comb a 

 gradual curvature, so as to resume the ordinary distance. 

 But scarcely any instance of this adaptation of efforts 

 to circumstances is more interesting than that narrated 

 of a wasp by Dr. Darwin. Perceiving one of these 

 insects upon his gravel walks, with a fly nearly as large 

 as itself, he knelt down to watch its operations. To 

 his utter amazement, he beheld it cut off the head 

 and abdomen, and then take off its diminished load, 

 and fly away. A breeze of wind, however, acting upon, 

 the wings of its mutilated burden, greatly impeded its 

 progress; upon which it again alighted, deliberately 

 sawed off first one and then the other of its encumber- 



* Kirby and Spence's Introd. to Entomology, voL ii. p. 477. 

 f Ibid. vol. ii. p. 483. 



D 



