184 MESSRS. C. HORNE AND F. SMITH ON HYMENOPTERA 
from the beautiful white marble arches; but as soon as a nest is destroyed it is renewed 
at a few feet distance. They sometimes choose cupboards to build their nests in; and 
when in one case they had made their comb in one in daily use, they molested no one. 
This was at Nynee Tal, in the veranda of a house called Maldon, now the Govern- 
ment House. 
The manner in which these bees adhere, after having planted their stings, as com- 
pared with the habits of the Polistes, is worthy of note, although of course every one 
knows how often they leave their stings behind them in the wound, and thus meet 
their own death. 
In one case of an attack by bees in the camp of Mr. B. W. Colvin, Magistrate, of 
Mainpuri, they looked, I am told, like a black mass of insects on the clothes on the 
backs of our men, upon which they had alighted; and in this case, I imagine, most of 
them were unable to withdraw their stings from the cotton-cloth jackets in which they 
had fixed them. 
Besides the moth before alluded to, these insects have many enemies. Merops 
viridis (the Bee-eater) plays sad havoc amongst them; but in the hills, at least, the 
lizards, who live in the cracks of the rocks and in the hollows in the stone walls, are 
still more destructive. 
Colonel H. Ramsay, C.B., the Commissioner of Kumaon, with whom I was staying 
last year, near Almorah, North-west Province, settled many hives in trunks of trees 
covered up with stones, but could make nothing of them by reason of the lizards, the 
large blue species so common in the Himaleh, probably Tiliqua rufescens. These 
animals would lie in wait and snap up the bees, regardless of their stings, as they 
alighted at the hive; in fact, they fairly destroyed several swarms. 
Again, the Crested Honey-Buzzard (Pernis cristata), a small hawk, darts down on 
the comb and carries off a large portion in its claws, which, in spite of the bees, who 
fly at and attack it on all sides, it quietly eats on a neighbouring bough. How it 
escapes their stings I could never make out. I once also saw a nest of Jcaria taken 
off a cornice just as 1 was preparing to secure it, having brought a ladder for the 
purpose ; and these insects sting even more viciously than the bees. 
Again, in the hills, as all know, the bears make prodigious efforts to get at the comb 
and honey when in trees. They also eat, I believe, the grubs and bee-bread; and 
although they seem annoyed, they care little for the bee-stings. These insects often 
hang their combs under rocks where no bear can touch them, and where they are also 
well sheltered from the weather. 
Mr. F. Moore, of the India Office, has kindly and carefully compared the Galleria 
of the North-west Provinces with the specimen of the English species in the British 
Museum, and holds it to be the same insect, viz. Galleria mellolella—which is a very 
curious fact, the more so as this species extends over the whole of the North-western 
Provinces of India. ‘The native name of this bee in the North-west Provinces is Dingar. 
