^ OF NATURAL HISTORY. 3^5 



ed half an inch. This labour, for a fingle bee, is prodigious ; 

 but, in executing it, {he confumes weeks, and even months. 



Around the foot of a poft or piece of wood where one of 

 thefe bees are working, little heaps of timber- du ft are always 

 found lying on the ground. Thefe heaps daily increafe in 

 magnitude, and the particles of duft are as large as thofe 

 produced by a hand-faw. The two teeth with which the" 

 animal is provided are the only inftruments (he employs in 

 making fuch confiderable perforations. Each tooth confifts 

 of a folid piece of fhell, which in fhape refembles an auger. 

 It is convex above, concave below, and terminates in a fharp 

 but ftrong point. 



Thefe long holes are defigned for lodgings to the worms 

 that are to proceed from the eggs which the bee is foon to 

 depoiit in them. But, after the holes are finiihed, her la- 

 lour is by no means at an end. The eggs muft not be min- 

 gled, or piled above each other. Every feparate worm muft 

 have a diftincl apartment, without any communication with 

 the others. Each long hole or tube, accordingly, is only the 

 outer walls of a houfe which is to conftft of many cham- 

 bers ranged one above another. A hole of about twelve 

 inches in length (he divides into ten or twelve feparate ap- 

 artments, each of which is about an inch high. The roof 

 of the loweft room is the floor of the fecond, and fo on to 

 the uppermoft. Each floor is about the thicknefs of a French 

 crown. The floors or divifions are compofed of particles of 

 wood cemented together by a glutinous fubftance from the 

 animal's mouth. In making a floor, flie commences with 

 gluing an annular plate of wood-duft round the internal cir- 

 cumference of the cavity. To this plate ftie attaches a fec- 

 ond, to the fecond a third, and to the third a fourth, till the 

 whole floor is completed. The undermoft cell requires only 

 J. roof, and this roof is «i floor to the feoond, 3cc. 



