53 



A most peculiar situation for the nest of a Leaf-cutting bee has been described by 

 *Mr. E. Baynes Keed in the article already mentioned. The cells were made in th e . 

 rolled-up leaves of a plum-tree (Fig. 

 28). I have seen M. optiva at work 

 cutting pea leaves, and I suspect the 

 same insect had removed the circular 

 pieces that were wanting from leaves 

 of an ash-leaved maple that grew 

 close by. 



The males of many species of 

 Megachile have the anterior tarsi very 

 oddly dilated and fringed with long 

 hairs; some have besides the first joint 

 grooved in front forming a remarkable 

 pouch. In M. frigida, this pouch 

 extends only to the end of the first 

 joint ; but in M. scrobiculata it projects 

 above the second, and in M. pugnata 

 even projects over both the second 

 and third. Of what use this appendage 

 can be to these insects is not easy 

 to conjecture. I found in one two little 

 particles of vegetable fibre which seemed Fig. 28. 



to have been nipped from some young plant-stem or branch. Could it be that the male 

 ljelps the female in the preparation of the nest, and brings in his pouches masticated 

 vegetable matter for the purpose 1 Smith (I. c, p. 158), states that such matter is found 

 closing the cells of an Osmia, a genus belonging to the same sub-family as the Megachile, 

 the Dasygastrae (so called from Dasys, hairy, and G aster, belly). In the two nests 

 which I have examined, I could not, however, find anything else in the cells besides a 

 crust composed of pollen grains united by some gummy matter having no sweet taste 

 that I could perceive. The pollen, examined with the microscope, seemed to come alto- 

 gether from flowers of composite, with the exception of a few stray grains, in one case, 

 of evening primrose, in the other, of pumpkin. 



It is a most interesting sight to watch the busy mother bee intent at work on a 

 composite head of flowers. It collects the honey by protruding its long tongue into one 

 corolla after another, while with the posterior legs it brings the stamens of other flowers 

 against its ventral brush, which retains the delicate pollen granules. When gathering 

 pollen only, it may occasionally be noticed, moving rapidly over the disc of flowers while 

 sweeping the stamens with its brush. But who will ever succeed in witnessing the 

 manner in which the pollen is afterwards removed from the brush, heaped in the prepared 

 cell and mixed with honey to form the food of the larvae not yet born 1 I have noticed 

 once a Gnathocera female just coming out of its nest, re-enter it backwards either to 

 deposit pollen or more likely to lay an egg, and soon come out again, but only to go in 

 once more, head first this time, to see if all was right and then fly away. 



After I had once been induced, as I have related, to gi^e some attention to Hymen- 

 optera, and seeing how great a part this order of insects plays in the fertilisation of 

 plants, I could not stop at my first steps in their study, and have found, whenever I had 

 the possibility, much pleasure and instruction in trying to improve my first acquaintance 

 with them. There is yet so much unknown as to the life history of those that have been 

 observed at all, so many have as yet received no attention whatever, that they offer an 

 immense field of discovery for any one willing to use his eyes in observing what is going 

 on about him on all sides. In the middle of the city of Ottawa, in my house and yard 

 fthe latter ten yards by four, but as thickly filled with plants as they can grow), I have 

 captured specimens of more than 1 20 species of Hymenoptera alone, about 30 of which 

 when submitted for identification to Abbe Provancher, our highest Canadian authority 

 on Hymenoptera, have been declared by him to be new to science. 



