OF NOETHUJvIBERLAND AND DURHAM. 139 



work of the leaf -cutting Bees, Megachile. The pieces cut out are 

 used for lining their burrows, the circular ones for the ends, and 

 the ovals for the sides of the cells. It is very intere"sting to 

 watch a female as she proceeds with her work : alighting on the 

 edge of a leaf, which she grasps on each side with her two pairs 

 of fore feet, she uses her mandibles like a pair of scissors, turns, 

 as it were, on a pivot, quickly clips out the piece, and takes 

 flight with it at the moment it becomes detached. 



The Humble Bees are the largest, most numerous; most gene- 

 rally distributed, and the most industrious of all our Hymenop- 

 tera. Their bright colours and cheerful summer-like hum make 

 them universal favourites. They show considerable sagacity 

 when seeking for sweets : if the flower is large enough they 

 boldy enter, but if not they insert their tongue into the corolla. 

 Some of the Bees, however, being furnished with a proboscis 

 too short for doing this in the usual way, adopt another plan : 

 they bite a hole or holes at the base of the corolla, or in some 

 cases through both the calix and corolla, immediately over the 

 nectary, and so come at the desired nectar.* 



The economy of the Hive or Honey Bee is so wonderful, and 

 many of the facts connected with its history so strange, as to 

 appear almost incredible. These wonders, however, are so ge- 

 nerally well known that it would be presumptuous in me to do 

 more than allude to them. 



The Aculeata have been so much neglected by provincial ento- 

 mologists that there are no local catalogues whatever. We can 

 only, therefore, compare our list of local species with those 

 recorded by Mr. F. Smith, in his Monograph for the whole of 

 Great Britain. His families, subfamilies, and numbers of each 



* Mr. R. Howse has kindly allowed me to examine a number of the flowers of a Meii- 

 ziczia, which he had preserved in spirit. Each of these has from one to four bilobed holes 

 at the base of the corolla, not simply punctured, but the lobes neatly bitten out. Mr. Albany 

 Hancock has deternuued tliis to be the work of Bomhus lucarum, by taking the female in Ihe 

 act. Amongst other plants in which the calyx, or corolla, or both, have been similarly ti'cated, 

 we find garden and field beans, scarlet beans, larkspurs,, azaleas, fuschias, salvias, snap- 

 dragons, &c. To beans these punctiuos are thought to be injurious, liy causing the incipient 

 pod to be cither partially or entirely abortive. 



