48 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



figured, by Kirby, in his valuable ' Monographia. ' If 

 it ever be found here, its large size and beautiful 

 violet-coloured wings will render mistakes impossi- 

 ble. 



The violet carpenter-bee usually selects an up- 

 right piece of wood, into which she bores obhquely 

 for about an inch ; and then, changing the direction, 

 works perpendicularly, and parallel to the sides of 

 the wood, for twelve or fifteen inches, and a half an 

 inch in breadth. Sometimes the bee is contented 

 with one or two of these excavations ; at other times, 

 when the wood is adapted to it, she scoops out three 

 or four — a task which sometimes requires several 

 weeks of incessant labour. 



The tunnel in the wood, however, is only one part 

 of the work ; for the little architect has afterwards 

 to divide the whole into cells, somewhat less than an 

 inch in depth. It is necessary, for the proper growth 

 of her progeny, that each should be separated from 

 the other, and be provided with adequate food. She 

 knows, most exactly, the quantity of food which each 

 grub will require, during its growth ; and she there- 

 fore does not hesitate to cut it oif from any additional 

 supply. In constructing her cells, she does not employ 

 clay, like the bee which we have mentioned above, 

 but the saw dust, if we may call it so, which she has 

 collected in gnawing out the gallery. It would not, 

 therefore, have suited her design to scatter this about, 

 as our carpenter-bee did. The violet bee, on the 

 contrary, collects her gnawings into a little store-heap 

 for future use, at a short distance from her nest. She 

 proceeds thus ; — at the bottom of her excavation she 

 deposits an egg, and over it fills a space nearly an 

 inch high with the pollen of flowers, made into a paste 

 with honey. She then covers this over with a ceiling 

 composed of cemented sawdust, which also serves 

 for the floor of the ne.xt chamber above it. For thiis 



