248 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis 
they would come out even on cold and gloomy days and 
work hard, striving to complete their task almost as if 
they felt in some way that time and life were ebbing 
fast. 
It will perhaps lead to a clearer understanding if we 
pass from these generalizations to the record of what 
actually happened after the rainy afternoon of August 
29 and other cloudy and cold days. I merely give ex- 
cerpts from the original notes. 
‘August 30. The rain fell until 2 p. m. yesterday, 
after that hour no insects were abroad. The night was 
rather cold and today it was 10 a. m. before the first 
insect appeared about the bank. A black cricket poked 
his head out of one of the bee-holes where he had spent 
the night. Soon several wasps, Tachysphex terminatus, 
were scraping away the soil about their nests. A few 
specimens each of Ancistrocerus fulvipes, Monobia qua- 
dridens and Xylocopa virginica, and one each of Try- 
poxylon clavatum, Chlorion auripes, and three white- 
banded bees, Entechnia taurea were at work at their va- 
rious duties of nidification: these were all observed ab 
11:30 a. m. and all seemed unusually industrious, as if 
to make up for the time lost in yesterday’s rain. As it 
neared noon, the white-banded bees appeared in greater 
abundance, and the parasitic bee-fly, Argyromoeba tig- 
rina, made its appearance. That the sunshine was a fac- 
tor in bringing out the bees is evidenced by the fact that 
only from the nests that had been warmed by the di- 
rect sunlight had the bees crept out to work. The 
mothers from the nests in sunny sites were the first to 
be active in bringing loads of pollen, while those nests 
not so favored showed no external signs of life. I have 
previously stated that this species of bee, Entechnia 
