REAWAKENINGS 89 



industry : " Some work even at night. Fea has recorded 

 the capture of a species in Upper Burmah working by moon- 

 light, and the same industry may be observed in this country 

 if there be sufficient heat as well as light . Godart, about two 

 hundred years ago, stated that a trumpeter-bee is kept in some 

 nests to rouse the denizens to work in the morning : this has 

 been treated as a fable by subsequent writers, but is con- 

 firmed in a circumstantial manner by Hoffer, who observed 

 the performance in a nest of Bombus ruderatus in his labora- 

 tory. On the trumpeter being taken away, its office was, the 

 following morning, filled by another individual. The trum- 

 peting was done as early as three or four o'clock in the 

 morning, and it is by no means impossible that the earliness 

 of the hour may have had something to do with the fact that 

 for two hundred years no one confirmed the old naturalist's 

 observation." 



The inter-relations of humble-bees with other living 

 creatures are manifold. Darwin has shown how they form 

 a link in the chain that binds cats and clover-crop, and they 

 are similarly bound up with the pollination of many other 

 flowers. They have numerous enemies the field-mice that 

 burglar their nests, many insects that destroy the larvae, and 

 at least one bird, Merops apiaster, the bee-eater. Numerous 

 mites are often seen on their bodies. 



Perhaps the most extraordinary feature in the economy 

 of Bombus is their tolerance for their Dopp el-Ganger, 

 Psithyrus, which are inmates of their nests. Host and guest 

 are like one another : " They were not distinguished by the 

 earlier entomologists ; and what is still more remarkable, 

 each species of Psithyrus resembles the Bombus, with which 

 it usually lives. There appear, however, to be occasional 

 exceptions to this rule, Smith having seen one of the yellow- 

 banded Psithyrus in the nest of a red-tailed Bombus. 

 Psithyrus is chiefly distinguished from Bombus by the 



