180 MESSES. C. HORNE AND E. SMITH ON HrMENOPTEEA 



female then lays an egg on the top of the same, and both male and female set to work 

 gnawing at the interior near the mouth of the opening of the bamboo for saw-dust. 

 This they work up with some viscous fluid which is ejected from the mouth, and form 

 therewith a firm floor for the next cell. This floor is much thicker at the sides, where 

 it joins the bamboo, than in the middle: the perfect insect, when emerging, has strong 

 jaws, and his head is in the middle of the cell ; he can therefore easily moisten and cut 

 through this thin centre. 



The cocoon is very strongly spun; and a long time elapses ere the perfect insect 

 emerges. After all the work is finished (and these insects generally cease working at 

 the end of October), they appear to retire into hollow bamboos to hybernate or die. 

 Later on in the season I have opened bamboos and found six or seven, one after another, 

 all dead ; whilst at other times I have found them in a state of stupor caused by the 

 cold. The young, I have reason to believe, do not come out until the spring. Their 

 chief enemy is a species of Coelionyx^ of which three were hatched, together with about 

 fourteen bees, from one series of cells. 



This species often burrows in soft " seenul" wood {Bombax heptaphyllum) (which is 

 used in the building of outhouses), and can then be detected by the heap of coarse 

 raspings under the hole. The bee-bread is very pleasant to the taste, with a slight 

 subacid, and keeps good for a very long time. I am not aware that this bee ever works 

 in living timber. 



The insect in the larva-state is often destroyed by a minute Chalcididous insect of the 

 genus Eucyrtus. From one single specimen I bred 300 of these insects ; and two-thirds 

 of those I tried to rear were destroyed by them. 



''Mainpuri, July 10, 1865. — I was somewhat interested to-day in watching the 

 shower of lovely yellow blossoms falling from a fine bush of a beautiful flower, and by 

 observing how it was caused. I noticed the large black Bee {Xylocopa chloroptera) 

 cutting the tube of the corolla, and inserting its tongue for the honey which abounded 

 there ; the flower immediately after fell ; and amongst the hundreds on the ground I 

 could not find one which was not so bitten." 



Xtlocopa ^stuans, Linn. 

 The habits of this insect are so exactly like those of X. chloroptera that they need 

 little further account. They use bamboos for their cells, and make divisions with 

 raspings from the interior. I found three or four of these bees in company with three 

 or four of X. chloroptera in the same hollow bamboo. When they cannot find a 

 bamboo, they use any hole in a post or tree for the construction of their cells. I have 

 also found them dead in bamboos, whither they had resorted to hybernate or die ; but 

 as their pupae remain a very long time in their cases ere they emerge, the supply in 

 any case is well kept up, and the insect is a common one. Various species of Anthrax 

 and Coelioxys are their great parasitical enemies. 



