Entomological Society 



6291 



was going energetically to work, and had recently shown him some excellent 

 drawings intended to illustrate the work before him. The Leyden Museum was par- 

 ticularly rich in the insects of the Indian islands, such as the industry of Mr. Wallace 

 was now adding to our British collections. 



Mr. Westwood added tliat the drawers containing the larger Lepidoplera in the 

 collection alluded to were constructed with glass bottoms, the insects being pinned to 

 narrow slips of cork affixed thereto ; this plan obviated the necessity of taking out the 

 specimens to examine the under side, as to do so it was only necessary to turn the 

 drawer upside down. 



Bees Feeding on Pollen. 



Mr. Tegetmeier staled that with a view to prove more satisfactorily that bees 

 devoured pollen in their perfect state, he had driven the stocks from two ordinary 

 straw hives into one of his bee hives, placing in the box above it some old comb filled 

 with pollen, which was speedily eaten by the bees, although as there was a quantity of 

 syrup in the food-pan, they were certainly not driven to devour it from hunger : he 

 exhibited the empty comb to the Meeting, observing that the only mention made by 

 any writer on bees of pollen being eaten by the perfect insects was in ' Kirby and 

 Spence's Introduction to Entomology.' 



Mr. Tegetmeier added that Mr. Darwin has lately coloured the margin of some 

 cells in the course of construction, and found that the bees remasticated the coloured 

 wax and used it in the formation of the cells, thus proving that they can work up old 

 material. 



Cylindrical forms of Cells. 



Mr. Smith observed that the theory advanced by Mr. Waterhouse in the ' Penny 

 Cyclopaedia,' of the bees first making cylindrical excavations, only separated from 

 each other by the thickness of the walls of the intended hexagons at their points of 

 contact, certainly in his opinion, would render it absolutely necessary that the bee, or 

 wasp working, should be able to insert its head into the excavations, otherwise, how 

 could they possibly form the planes of the hexagons ? Now, that such could not be 

 the case in building the cells of the wasp, he was prepared to prove. Mr. Smith ex- 

 hibited the spring nest of Vespa vulgaris, in which the mother- wasp had couslriicted 

 about thirty cells, seven only being carried up to their full height, which contained 

 each a grub or a pupa, so that no worker had escaped ; the cells being of such a size 

 that by no possibility could the head of the builder be inserted into them ; this, he con- 

 tended, was in his mind decisive against the theory alluded to, at least it was not 

 applicable to the building of the nests of the Vespidie. 



Mr. Smith also called particular attention to a sinj,ailar fact, namely, that in the 

 nest of the wasp the smallest cells were built in the spring nests by the largest indi- 

 vidual, the female; whilst the largest cells, those required for the females and males, 

 were built in the summer by the smallest individuals, the workers ; now, as he under- 

 stood the Waterhousian theory, the size of the planes of the hexagon, were determined 

 by the distance the insects excavating could reach with its mandibles, if such were the 

 case, how was it possible to reconcile the above facts with the theory of the ' Penny 

 Cyclopaedia.' 



Mr. Westwood could not imagine how the female wasp constructed the beautiful 



