OF INSECTS AND REPTILES. 349 



4. Thefcar/ef Aranea, 7\mf, or Lady-Bug (d) is often fecn in gar- 

 dens and fields, walking abroad out of the earth among the 

 plants and herbage on a bright day. 



5. The Hornet (e) is rarely feen with us, except in a very hot 

 flimmer. It is a formidable, but beautiful apis ; the colours a 

 bright yellow, red, and green, and black ; the thorax black, 

 and fome of the rings or circles elegantly pectinated. A large 

 commonwealth of them was difcovered in the hollow of an oak- 

 tree, by the very brink of North Tyne, in Brome-haugh, near Chip- 

 chace, in the year 1762, a remarkable hot fummer; and on the 

 3.oth of Augnji a period was put to it by fufFocation with lighted 

 ftraw, for the fake of feeing their mechanical fkill in the ftruc- 

 rure of their combs. They were fix in number ; one of the outer 

 combs meafuring twenty-one inches in circumference, the mid- 

 dle comb nineteen inches and a half; the other combs gradually 

 lefs ; -the waxen cells extremely thin and fine, elegantly varie- 

 gated with a light and deep brown ; many of them meafuring 

 an inch and an half in depth ; thofe in the leafl outer comb 

 empty ; a numerous vermicular generation in all the reft, covered 

 at the top with a thin film of a pearl-colour, round and promi- 

 nent, glofTy and mining, like polifhed pearls. So many ranges 

 of combs, conftructed with fo much beauty, and with the art 

 of the niceft geometrician, is a furprizing fpectacle ! So noble a 



(d) Araneus exiguus coccineus vulgo ANGLICE a TANT ditus. Lift. Aran. 100. f. 38. 

 Raj. Inf. p. 41. n. 38. Araneus ANGLICUS coccineus minimus. Petiv. Muf. p. 65. n. 

 701. Acarus terreflris ruber ; abdornine depreffo. Linn. Faun. Suec. n. 348. n. 1200. 



(e) Crabro. Charlet. Inf. p. 38, 39. n. 5. cum bona defcriptione. Swamm. bibt. t. 26. 

 f. 9. Apis thorace nigro ; antice rufo immaculate abdominis incifuris pundto nigro duplici 

 contiguo. Linn. Faun. Suec, n. 988. 



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