748 Insects. 



fringed with palish fulvous hairs, the fourth and fifth segments have a 

 dense fringe of fulvous hair, the sixth segment is somewhat acute and 

 emarginate, the seventh entire. 



I took the solitary specimen from which the above description is 

 drawn up, in Hampshire. It is quite distinct from the males previ- 

 ously described : its antennae are much longer, and its abdomen gra- 

 dually widens from its base (as in the male of O. caerulescens) ; other- 

 wise it resembles the male of O. hhta. It may hereafter prove to be 

 the male of O. parietina, there being a general resemblance between 

 the insects, but I have no other reason for the conjecture. 



Frederick Smith. 



High Street, Newington, September, 1844. 



Note on the Economy of the Bee. The bee will only work in complete darkness. 

 The admission of light into the hive is the signal for the immediate cessation of all 

 labour, and when the flap-door of a glass hive is opened, the bees are seen hurrying 

 and skurrying about in a state of alarm and confusion, while the exhibitor explains to 

 a spectator that the bees are at work. If I could be shown a bee making a cell, I 

 would travel barefoot from Horsham to Windsor to behold the spectacle. It would at 

 once lead to a solution of one of the most important problems in the Natural History 

 of the bee, which is the origin of wax, about which we are almost as ignorant in the 

 nineteenth century as in the time of Virgil or Columella. The actions of the apiarian 

 monarch are enshrined in an almost impenetrable mystery. It is my sincere wish, 

 however, to disabuse the minds of all keepers of bees, that the internal economy of a 

 hive is to be ascertained by looking through a pane of glass ; for so tenacious are these 

 wonderful insects of that economy being explored by the eye of man, that supposing 

 the flap of the hive to be left open, the bees will immediately cover the interior side of 

 the glass with a coating of wax, so that no eye can penetrate to their works. — Huish. 



Note on a remarkable habit of the Wasp and Hornet. I have observed, on more oc- 

 casions than one, a habit of the common wasp and hornet, which appears to have es- 

 caped the notice of naturalists. On fine summer and autumnal evenings, when the 

 spiders usually come out and station themselves in the centre of their webs, a wasp 

 may occasionally be seen hovering about from web to web, and finally seizing and car- 

 rying away one of these spiders from the middle of his fortress. I fancied, but could 

 not on any occasion get near enough to ascertain, that the wasp then made a meal of 

 his captive, eating it on the nearest or most convenient resting-place he could find. I 

 observed, too, that every spider did not seem acceptable, but that many were passed 

 over before the victim was finally decided on. Some of the numerous correspondents 

 of ' The Zoologist ' can doubtless inform me whether this is a common habit of the 

 wasp ; but it strikes me as worth notice and more close observation, for the abstrac- 

 tion of the spider must be a task of no little difficulty, owing to the tenacity with which 

 he would cling to his net, and the absence of anything like a fulcrum on which to rest 

 while pulling him away. The swoop of a hawk, or picking up of a hare by a grey- 

 hound, are clumsy evolutions compared to this. Let me add, too, that I never saw an 

 abortive attempt, or a failure. — W. S. Lewis ; Kingsdown, Bristol, October 8, 1844. 



