HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 501 



summit of the angles formed by their meeting, seemed to 

 give solidity to the cells, round the axis of the longest of 

 which there were sometimes one or two red zones. From 

 subsequent experiments, M. Huber ascertained that this 

 substance was actually propolis, collected from the buds 

 of the poplar. He saw them with their mandibles draw 

 a thread from the mass of propolis that was most con- 

 veniently situated, and breaking it by a sudden jerk of 

 the head, take it with the claws of their fore-legs, and 

 then, entering the cell, place it at the angles and sides, &c. 

 which they had previously planished. The yellow co- 

 lour, however, is not given by the propolis, and it is not 

 certain to what it is owing. — The bees sometimes mix 

 wax and propolis and make an amalgam, known to the 

 ancients and called by them Mitys and Pissoce?-os, which 

 they use in rebuilding cells that have been destroyed, in 

 orden to strengthen and support the edifice a . 



We know but little of the proceedings of the species 

 of bees not indigenous to Europe, which live in socie- 

 ties and construct combs like that cultivated by us. A 

 traveller in Brazil mentions one there which builds a 

 kind of natural hive : " On an excursion towards upper 

 Tapagippe," says he, " and skirting the dreary woods 

 which extend to the interior, I observed the trees more 

 loaded with bees' nests than even in the neighbourhood 

 of Porto Seguro. They consist of a ponderous shell of 

 clay, cemented similarly to martins' nests, swelling from 

 high trees about a foot thick, and forming an oval mass 



a Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles, par Francois Huber, ii. 

 101-288. I observed the bees collecting propolis this spring from 

 the buds of Populus balsamifcra. 



