3Qg PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



quence been expected to make their attack upon us in the summer and 

 autumn, but few have appeared. Mr. Knight observed this in 1806, and 

 supposes it to be caused by a failure of males. ^ I have since more than 

 once made the same observation, and Major Moor, as well as myself, 

 noticed it in the year 1S15. What took place here in the following year 

 may in some degree account for it. Though the summer had been very 

 wet, and one may almost say winterly, there were in the neighborhood in 

 which 1 reside abundance of wasps at the usual time : but except on 

 some few warm days, in which they were very active, benumbed by the 

 cold they were crawling about on the floors of my house, and seemed 

 unable to fly. In this vicinity numbers make their nests in the banks of 

 the river. In the beginning of the month of October there was a 

 very considerable inundation, after which not a single wasp was to be 

 seen. The continued wet that produces an inundation may also destroy 

 those nests that are out of the reach of the waters ; and perhaps this cause 

 may have operated in those years above alluded to, in which the appear- 

 ance of the workers in the summer and autumn did not correspond with the 

 large numbers of females observed in the spring. 



In ordinary seasons, in the month lately mentioned, October, wasps 

 seem to become less savage and sanguinary ; for even flies, of which 

 ■earlier in the summer they are the pitiless destroyers, may be seen to 

 enter their nests with impunity. It is then, probably, that they begin 

 to be first affected by the approach of the cold season, when nature teaches 

 them it is useless longer to attend to their young. They themselves all 

 perish, except a few of the females, upon the first attack of frost. 



Reaumur, from whom (see the sixth Memoir of his last volume) most 

 of these observations are taken, put the nests of wasps under glass hives, 

 and succeeded so effectually in reconciling these little restless creatures 

 to them that tliey carried on their various works under his eye ; and if 

 you feel disposed to follow his example, I have no doubt you will 

 throw light upon many parts of their history, concerning which we are 

 now in darkness. 



Havinff given you some idea, imperfect indeed from the want of mate- 

 rials, of the societies of wasps, I must next draw up for you the best 

 account I can of those of the humble-bees.^ These form a kind of inter- 

 mediate link between the wasps and the hive-bees, collecting honey 

 indeed and making wax, but constructing their combs and cells without 

 the geometric precision of the latter, and of a more rude and rustic kind 

 of architecture ; and distinguished from both, though they approach nearer 

 to the bees, by the extreme hairiness of their bodies. 



The population of a humble-bees' nest may be divided into four orders 

 of individuals : the large females; the small females; the males; and 

 the workers. 



The lar^e females, Wke the female wasps, are the original founders of 

 their republics. They are often so large, that by the side of the small 

 ones or the workers, which in every other respect they exactly resemble, 

 they look like giants opposed to pigmies. They are excluded from the 

 pupa in the autumn ; and pair in that season, with males produced from the 



> Philosophical Transactions for 1807, 243. « Bombus. Apis *». e. 2. K. 



