AUGUST 186 



Bees are divided by entomologists into six or seven 

 groups, whereof one is composed of social bees, that 

 is, bees living in an organised community and working 

 co-operatively ; the rest being known as solitary bees, 

 working independently in pairs. It would take a very 

 fat volume to describe the amazing variety in the 

 habits of the various species — their architecture, the 

 provision they make for their offspring (which most of 

 them are destined never to see alive), and the cunning 

 devices to which they resort for the defence of their 

 nursery. Here I propose to call attention only to one 

 species of a genus represented in Britain by several 

 others. 



Those who cultivate roses must have noticed some- 

 times that the leaves of their bushes have been 

 disfigured by numerous circular pieces, each the size 

 of a sixpence, having been cut out of them. This is 

 the work of a species of leaf-cutter bee which confines its 

 operations to roses. It belongs to the genus Megachile, 

 meaning large lipped, so called because of a peculiar 

 development of the mouth, which is specialised into an 

 instrument for shearing the leaves of plants. This 

 instrument, a greatly exaggerated lahrwm or lip, when 

 at rest is bent under the head and enclosed within 

 the mandibles, whence it is extruded for cutting the 

 material with which the bee builds her nursery. 



A working-man's wife sent me lately by post a 

 decayed branch of gorse, hollowed out and filled with 

 neatly shaped cylinders about three-quarters of an 

 inch long, which my correspondent likened to green 

 cartridges, and asked whether I could explain what 



