THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



In an hour's time afterwards I have threaded all 

 the twistiugs and turnings of the four miles that 

 intervene between Dr. Hull's house and the city 

 of Alton ; and I am warmly welcomed to his 

 hospitable home. In five seconds we are, both 

 of us, immersed uj) to the eyes in the great Bug 

 Question. 



On informing Dr. Hull of my new theory, as to 

 the supposed wounds inflicted by the locusts that 

 are swarming in all directions on his place, 1 

 am much gratified by hearing that he knows 

 these gigantic wasps very well, and that he and 

 his sons and his hired men see one or two of 

 them every year, flying along with considerable 

 difficulty with a locust in their grasp. Their 

 sting, he says, is almost a quarter of an inch 

 long, and they often, being overladen with their 

 burden, butt up against people that stand in 

 their way. The details as to their burying the 

 locusts in holes in the ground were received by 

 me some time ago from Benj. Borden, a respec- 

 table Quaker farmer in Pennsylvania, who wit- 

 nessed them with his own eyes. Having pre- 

 served a specimen of one of these monster wasps, 

 he was enabled to identify the species by com- 

 municating it to the Academy of Sciences at 

 Philadelphia. Another species of the same 

 genus (the speciosiis of Drury) has long been 

 known to have the same peculiar habits. In a 

 future paper, we propose to illustrate at greater 

 length the remarkable pecuhaiities of this and 

 other digger-wasps, and also those of the tiue 

 wasps, including the social species, such as the 

 Yellow-.Jacket and tin Bald-faced Hoi net 



There are scores of the gigantic Carpenter Bee 

 (Xyloco'pa Carolina, Linnseus, Fig. 4, a), flying 

 round Dr. Hull's house, and boring numerous 

 round holes in such parts of the timbers as are 

 neither wliitewashed nor painted. At the bot- 

 tom of one of these holes, which are often sev 

 eral inches deep, they deposit, by way of pro- 

 vision for their future lai-va, a mass of pollen, 

 for the collection of which the first joint of the 

 hindpawsof the females(Fig. 4, e),is enormously 

 lengthened and dilated and armed with stiff' 



hairs. This bee would be generally mistaken 

 for a large Humble-bee, though it is solitary and 

 not, like the Humble-bee, social ; and though in 

 other respects its habits differ so widely from 

 those of the Humble-bees. But the two may be 

 readily tiistiuguished by the different structure 

 of the hind legs. Fig. 4, e, shows the hind leg 

 of the female Carpenter Bee highly magnified; 

 Fig. 4, c, the same part in a female Humble-bee. 

 Dr. Hull informs me that this Carpenter bee 

 likewise infests the limbs of partially decayed 

 or wounded cedars, making its holes wherever 

 the wood is exposed by the removal of limbs for 

 the decoration of churches, etc. Wlierever the 

 bark covers the wood, there it refuses to bore. 



It has long been known that a certain solitary 

 wasp in Europe {Odynerus parietum, Linnaeus), 

 that bores holes in the clay mortar of walls where- 

 in to construct its nest,employs the excavated par- 

 ticles in attaching a temporary tube of tempered 

 earth to the exterior of each hole. Through this 

 lube it passes and repasses during the progress 

 of the work, pulling it to pieces when the work 

 is completed, and using the materials of which 

 it is composed in stopping up tlie mouth of its 

 hole, after the fasliion customary with digger- 

 wasps. I discovered at Dr. Hull's place that a 

 species of solitary Mason bee {AntJiophora 

 sponsa, Smith, Fig. 5, a) , wliich greatly resembles 



a small Humble-bee, has the same singular 

 habit, its tube being constructed of tempered 

 clay, and being about two inches long and three 

 quarters of an inch in diameter (Fig. o, b). 

 The way I came to make this interesting dis- 

 covery was as follows : Dr. Hull, being addicted 

 to all manner of new inventions for raising 

 early vegetables upon the most gigantic scale, 

 had constructed early in the season a vast sys- 

 tem of underground flues, for warming up the 

 earth on the entire side of a hill, wherein to 

 grow early tomatoes. Going with him to view 

 the mouths of the flues, which all of them opened 

 out at the bottom of the hill, and were con- 



