44 
SANTAREM. 
Chap. I. 
as the particles are successively added. The little hods- 
men soon have as much as they can carry, and they then 
fly off. I was for some time puzzled to know what the 
bees did with the clay ; but I had afterwards plenty 
of opportunity for ascertaining. They construct their 
combs in any suitable crevice in trunks of trees or 
perpendicular banks, and the clay is required to build 
up a wall so as to close the gap, with the exception of 
a small orifice for their own entrance and exit. Most 
kinds of Meliponse are in this way masons as well as 
workers in wax and pollen-gatherers. One little species 
(undescribed) not mjore than two lines long, builds a 
neat tubular gallery of clay, kneaded with some viscid 
substance outside the entrance to its hive, besides 
blocking up the crevice in the tree within which it is 
situated. The mouth of the tube is trumpet-shaped, 
and at the entrance a number of the pigmy bees are 
always stationed apparently acting as sentinels. 
It is remarkable that none of the American bees have 
attained that high degree of architectural skill in the 
construction of their comb which is shown by the Euro- 
pean hive bee. The wax cells of the Meliponae are 
generally oblong, showing only an approximation to the 
hexagonal shape in places where several of them are 
built in contact. It would appear that the Old World 
has produced in bees, as well as in other families of 
animals, far more advanced forms than the tropics of 
the New World. 
A hive of the Melipona fasciculata, which I saw 
opened, contained about two quarts of pleasantly-tasted 
liquid honey. The bees, as already remarked, have no 
