THE WOOD BEE. 279 



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Its curious operations. 



thick, she sometimes forms three or four of these 

 long holes in its interior : a labour which for a 

 single insect seems prodigious, but in executing 

 it some weeks are often employed. On the 

 ground, for about a foot from the place in which 

 one of these bees is working, little heaps of tim- 

 ber dust are to be seen. These heaps daily in- 

 crease in size, and the particles that compose 

 them are almost as large as those produced by a 

 hand-saw. The strong jaws of this insect are the 

 only instruments she employs in these perfora- 

 tions. After the holes are prepared, they are 

 divided into ten or twelve separate apartments, 

 each about an inch deep, the roof of one serving 

 for the bottom of another. The divisions arc 

 composed of particles of wood, cemented toge- 

 ther by a glutinous substance from the animal's 

 body. In making one of these, she commences 

 with glueing an annular plate of wood-dust, 

 about the thickness of half-a-crown, round the 

 internal circumference of the cavity: to this 

 plate she attaches a second, to the second a third, 

 and so on till the whole floor is completed. Be- 

 fore each cell is closed, it is filled with a paste 

 composed of the farina of flowers mixed with 

 honey, and an egg is deposited in it. When the 

 larva is hatched, it has scarcely room sufficient 

 to turn itself in the cell; but as the paste is de- 

 voured, the space is enlarged so as to allow it to 

 perform every necessary operation towards chang- 

 ing its state. 



