TERRESTRIAL 205 



kinds ol plants, to find flowers like the comfrey which show 

 little holes which the bees have bitten at the base of the corolla 

 an unprofitable burglary for the plant; to find the nest with 

 its store of honey ; to look for the quaint guest-bees (Psithyms) 

 that live as friendly but idle companions of the humble-bees ; to 

 try to distinguish different kinds of Bombus, these are among 

 the many exercises of observation that at once suggest themselves. 



Bedeguar Galls. The loose hedge by the side of the meadow 

 is full of wild roses, and among these there is almost certain to be 

 a " robin's pin-cushion " or " bedeguar gall/' a strange growth 

 from a leaf-bud, provoked by the grubs of Rhodites rosce, one of 

 the gall-making Hymenoptera. It is at first like a great cluster 

 of hairs each one well worth study with a lens, hence another 

 of its names, " moss-gall." But after a time the walls of the prison 

 cells enclosing the often numerous grubs become hard and woody. 

 Some of the galls should be cut open with a sharp knife to show 

 the grubs within, but it would be still more interesting to rear 

 the winged insects from the galls. When galls are opened it is 

 sometimes found that there are other tenants besides those which 

 have formed the galls. These are called " guests/' and they 

 have developed from eggs which have been laid in the galls formed 

 by the true gall-makers. But the curious fact is that these guests 

 also belong to the same family Cympidae. There is another 

 species (Rhodites eglanterice), which forms brightly coloured spher- 

 ical galls on the leaves of the wild rose. They are usually on the 

 under side, and they fall off before the leaf does. 



Earthworms. Part of the meadowland is likely to afford 

 abundant illustrations of the work of earthworms. This is dis- 

 cussed in another part of this book ; it is enough here to notice 

 that on the meadow excursion the pupils should examine the 

 castings, noticing how finely ground the soil is, should look for 

 heaps of little pebbles guarding the mouths of the burrows ; 

 should search near the rowan trees, for instance, for "the midribs 

 of the rowan's compound leaves lying like the spokes of a wheel 

 around the entrance, the leaflets having been taken underground ; 

 should follow on the moist roadway near the meadow the tracks 

 made by the earthworms during the night, showing, for instance, 

 that they sometimes describe a circle ; and should do half a dozen 



