160 BEES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



vances towards the entrance of the whorl, it becomes too wide 

 even for this contrivance ; here let us admire the ingenuity of 

 the little creature ; she constructs a couple of cells ti'ansversely ! 

 And this is the little animal which has been so blindly slandered 

 as being a mere machine ! 



I will take this opportunity of correcting a very widely diffused 

 error, which appears to have originated with Reaumur ; or, if 

 his account of the development of Xylocopa be correct, it 

 differs from that of every wood-boring bee which inhabits this 

 country : he says, " When the larva assumes the pupa, it is 

 placed in its cell with its head downwards ; a very wise precau- 

 tion, for thus it is prevented, when it has attained to its perfect 

 state and is eager to emerge into day, from making its way out 

 upwards, and disturbing the tenants of the superincumbent cells, 

 who being of later date, each than its neighbour below-stairs, 

 are not yet quite ready to go into public." Mr. Kirby also 

 quotes from a letter by the Rev. George Ashby, who, after de- 

 scribing the nest of Megachile centunculariSy says, "The lowest 

 and first born passes out through the bottom of its own (lowest) 

 cell I and so escapes without disturbing the rest, who are not 

 yet ready to emigrate." All such conclusions originate in con- 

 jecture. In the case of Osmia aurulenta constructing her cells 

 in the spiral tube of a snail's cell, where is the possibility of 

 escape? when burrowing in a sand-bank, the same difficulty 

 presents itself; when Chelostoma florisomnis avails itself of the 

 tube of a straw or reed, how is the insect to pass the first 

 knot which opposes its escape ? Such ai'e the results of theo- 

 retical conclusions : let us seek for knowledge in the careful in- 

 vestigation of the operations of nature. 



A bee is observed to ahght on an upright post, or other wood 

 suitable for its purposes; she commences the formation of her tun- 

 nel, not by excavating downwards, as she would be incommoded 

 with the dust and rubbish which she removes ; no, she works 

 upwards, and so avoids such an inconvenience. When she has 

 proceeded to the length required, she proceeds in a horizontal 

 direction to the outside of the post, and now her operations are 

 continued downwards'; she constructs a cell near the bottom of 

 the tube, a second and a third, and so on to the required num- 

 ber; the larva3 when full-fed have their heads turned upwards; 

 the bees which arrive at their perfect condition, or rather those 

 which are first anxious to escape into day, are two or three in 

 the upper cells, these are males; the females are usually ten or 

 twelve days later. This is the history of every wood-boring bee 

 which I have bred, and I have reared broods of nearly every 

 species indigenous to the country. I have observed in the in- 

 stance of Chelostoma florisomnis, that whilst one bee was carry- 



