272 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 
the building of walls and stopping up chinks: the latter composes whole 
Stages or stories of it made into a sort of papier maché with earth and spi- 
ders’ web.! 
Some ants form their nests of the leaves of trees. One of these was 
observed by Sir Joseph Banks in New South Wales, which was formed by 
glueing together several leaves as large as a hand. To keep these leaves 
in a proper position, thousands of ants united their strength, and if driven 
away the leaves spring back with great violence.* Another species of ant 
( Myrmica Kirbii Sykes), found in the Poona Collectorate, India, described 
by Colonel Sykes, forms its globular battoon-shaped nest, which is com- 
posed of a congeries of tile-like laminae of cow-dung, with the usual assem- 
blage of cells and nurseries, &c., composed of the same material, in the 
branches of trees and shrubs. Another East Indian species (Formica 
smaragdina) forms’ its nest of a very thin but double silk-like tissue‘; 
while Formica elata Lund builds its nest on the trunks of trees of earth 
mixed with leaves, and other species use the hairs of plants for the same 
purpose. F. bispinosa in Cayenne employs the down enveloping the 
seeds of the Bombax criba, which it felts into a sort of cottony sub- 
stance.® 
The most profound philosopher, equally with the most incurious of 
mortals, is struck with astonishment on inspecting the interior of a bee- 
hive. He beholds a city in miniature, He sees this city divided into 
regular streets, these streets composed of houses constructed on the most 
exact geometrical principles and the most symmetrical plan, some serving 
for store-houses for food, others for the habitations of the citizens, and a 
few, much more extensive than the rest, destined for the palaces of the 
sovereign. He perceives that the substance of which the whole city is 
built is one which man, with all his skill, is unable to fabricate ; and that 
the edifices in which it is employed are such, as the most expert artist 
would find himself incompetent to erect. And the whole is the work of 
a society of insects! “ Quel abime (he exclaims with Bonnet) aux yeuw du 
sage qwune ruche d’Abeilles! Quelle sagesse pyrofonde se cache dans cet 
abime! Quel philosophe osera le fonder!” Nor have its mysteries yet 
been fathomed. Philosophers have in all ages devoted their lives to the 
subject ; from Aristomachus of Soli in Cilicia, who, we are told by Pliny, 
for fifty-eight years attended solely to bees, and Philiscus the Thracian, 
who spent his whole time in forests investigating their manners, to Swam- 
merdam, Reaumur, Hunter, and Huber of modern times. Still the con- 
struction of the combs of a bee-hive is a miracle which overwhelms our 
faculties. 
You are probably aware that the hives with which we provide bees are 
not essential to their labours, and that they can equally form their city in 
the hollow of a tree or any other cavity. In whatever situation it is 
dann the general plan which they follow is the same, You have seen a 
oneycomb, and rust have observed that it is a flattish cake, composed of 
a vast number of cells, for the most part hexagonal, regularly applied to 
each other’s sides, and arranged in two strata or layers placed end to end. 
’ Huber, Recherches, &c. 61. 2 Hawkesworth’s Cook's Voyages, iii, 228. 
% Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. i. 101. 4 Ibid, i, proc. Lxxit, 
5 Westwood, Mod. Class. of Ins, ii. 223, 
6 Lacordaire, Jntr. aU’ Zntom. ii. 608, 
