HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



375 



single egg and the accompanying food deposited in it occupy 

 deserves particular notice. This is not more than half an 

 inch at the bottom, the remaining two inches and a half being 

 subsequently filled with earth. — When you next favour me 

 with a visit, I can show you the cells of this interesting in- 

 sect as yet unknown to British entomologists, for which I am 

 indebted to the kindness of M. Latreille, who first scientifi- 

 cally described the species. ^ 



Megachile centuncularis, M. Willughbiellay and other species 

 of the same family, like the preceding, cover the walls of 

 their cells with a coating of leaves, but are content with a 

 more sober colour, generally selecting for their hangings 

 the leaves of trees, especially of the rose, whence they have 

 been known by the name of the leaf-cutter bees. They dilFer 

 also from M. Papaveris in excavating longer burrows, and 

 filling them with several thimble-shaped cells composed of 

 portions of leaves so curiously convoluted, that, if we were 

 ignorant in what school they have been taught to construct 

 them, we should never credit their being the work of an in- 

 sect. Their entertaining history, so long ago as 1670, at- 

 tracted the attention of our countrymen Ray, Lister, Wil- 

 lughby, and Sir Edward King ; but we are indebted for the 

 most complete account of their procedures to Keaumur. 



The mother bee first excavates a cylindrical hole eight or 

 ten inches long, in a horizontal direction, either in the ground 

 or in the trunk of a rotten willow-tree, or occasionally in 

 other decaying wood. This cavity she fills with six or seven 

 cells wholly composed of portions of leaf, of the shape of a 

 thimble, the convex end of one closely fitting into the open 

 end of another. Her first process is to form the exterior 

 coating, which is composed of three or four pieces of larger 

 dimensions than the rest, and of an oval form. The second 

 coating is formed of portions of equal size, narrow at one end 

 but gradually widening towards the other, where the width 

 equals half the length. One side of these pieces is the ser- 

 rate margin of the leaf from which it was taken, which, as 

 the pieces are made to lap one over the other, is kept on the 



1 Latr. Hist. Nat. des Fourmis, 297. 

 B B 4 



