Xylocopa. INSECTS. Anthidium. 
pieces of leaf to form one cell. As soon as one of these 
is completed, the bee collects hone}' and pollen, which 
she places at the bottom, and on this provender, pro- 
vided for its young, she deposits an egg. She covers 
the shell with pieces of leaf, so cut as to fit it exactly, 
and then commences to form another similar cell above 
it. This bee usually makes its nest in holes in decayed 
wood, though it also constructs them in holes in walls 
and in pathwa)'s. 
Genus Xylocopa {Wood-cutter Bee).— In India 
and Ceylon, as I have been told, window and door 
frames are often perfectly riddled by a species of this 
genus. Dr. Cleghorn once asked me how their ravages 
could be stopped. “By employing iron frames,” I 
might have replied. The Xylocopa violacea, a large 
species, and with wings of a deep violet colour, I first 
saw flying about the flowers in the window of the 
modest home of Serville, the French entomologist, 
when I visited Paris in 1841. This bee is found com- 
monly in gardens ; it burrows in the upright putrescent 
espaliers or vine-props, occasionally in the garden 
seats, doors, and window shutters. In the beginning 
of spring, after repeated and careful surveys, she fixes 
upon a piece of wood suitable for her purpose, and 
with her strong mandibles begins the process of boring. 
First proceeding obliquely downwards, she soon points 
her course in a direction parallel with the sides of the 
wood, and at length, with unwearied exertion, forms a 
cylindrical hole or tunnel not less than twelve or 
fifteen inches long and half an inch broad. Where 
the diameter will admit of it, three or four of these 
pipes, nearly parallel with each other, are bored in the 
same piece. As yet she has completed but the shell 
of the destined habitation of her offspring; each of 
which, to the number of ten or twelve, will require a 
separate and distinct apartment. How, you will ask, 
is she to form these ? With what materials can she 
construct the floors and ceilings? Why, truly God 
“ doth instruct her to discretion and doth teach her.” 
In excavating her tunnel she has detached a large 
quantity of fibres, which lie on the ground like a heap 
of saw-dust. This material supplies all her wants. 
Having deposited an egg at the bottom of the cylinder 
along with the requisite store of pollen and honey, she 
next, at the height of about three quarters of an inch, 
which is the depth of each cell, constructs of particles 
of the saw-dust glued together, and also to the sides 
of the tunnel, what may be called an annular stage 
or scaffolding. When this is sufficiently hardened, its 
interior edge affords support for a second ring of the 
same materials, and thus the ceiling is gradually formed 
of these concentric circles, till there remains only a 
small orifice in its centre, which is also closed with a 
circular mass of agglutinated particles of saw-dust. 
When this partition, which serves as the ceiling of the 
first cell and the flooring of the second, is finished, it is 
about the thickness of a crown-piece, and exhibits the 
appearance of as many concentric circles as the animal 
has made pauses in her labour. One cell being finished, 
she proceeds to another, which she furnishes and com- 
pletes in the same manner ; and so on until she has 
divided her whole tunnel into ten or twelve apartments. 
Here, if you have followed me in this detail with 
197 
the interest which I wish it to inspire, a query will 
suggest itself. Every cell requires a store of honey 
and pollen, not to be collected but with long toil, and 
that a considerable interval must be spent in aggluti- 
nating the floors of each, it will be very obvious to you 
that the last egg in the last cell must be laid many 
days after the first. We are certain, therefore, tiiat 
the first egg will become a grub, and consequently a 
perfect bee, many days before the last What then 
becomes of it? you will ask. It is impossible that it 
should make its escape through eleven superincumbent 
cells without destroying the immature tenants ; and it 
seems equally impossible that it should remain patiently 
in confinement below them until they are all disclosed. 
This dilemma our heaven-taught architect has provided 
against. With forethought never enough to be admired, 
she has not constructed her tunnel with one opening 
only, but at the further end has pierced another orifice, 
a kind of back door, through which the insects produced 
by the fir.st laid eggs successively emerge into day. In 
fact, all the young bees, even the uppermost, go out by 
this road ; for, by an exquisite instinct each grub, when 
about to become a pupa, places itself in its cell with 
its head downwards, and thus is necessitated, when 
arri red at its last stage, to pierce its cell in this direc- 
tion. Much of this is compiled from the great work 
of Reaumur. 
Genus Anthidium.— White, in his Natural History 
of Selborne, says, “ There is a sort of wild bee fre- 
quenting the garden campion for the sake of its 
tomentum, which probably it turns to some purpose 
in the business of nidification. It is very pleasant to 
see with what address it strips off the pubes, running 
from the top to the bottom of a branch, and shaving it 
bare with the dexterity of a hoop-shaver. When it has 
got a vast bundle, almost as large as itself, it flies 
away, holding it secure between its chin and its fore- 
legs.” The bee so graphically alluded to is the Anthi- 
dium manicatum, the abdomen of which is spotted on 
the side with yellow, and the male of which has the 
abdomen inflexed at the end, and armed with five 
spines. It is truly a summer bee — which does not 
appear before the end of June or the beginning of July. 
The burrow in which its nest is placed is not constructed 
by itself, but it uses any hole which it finds adapted for 
its purpose; its nests are frequently found in holes 
bored in old willow-stumps by the Goat Moth. The 
chamber being formed, the bee collects a quantity of 
down from woolly-stemmed plants, with which she 
forms an outer coating. She then constructs a number 
of cells for the reception of the pollen or food of the 
larva. They consist of a woolly material, mixed with 
some glutinous matter, which resists the moisture of 
the food it contains, and in which the larva, on being 
full fed, spins a brown silken cocoon ; the sexes differ 
from most other bees in the males being much larger 
than the females. 
Linn®us described a species of the genus Chelos- 
toma under the name of Apis florisomnis, the male 
of that species frequently being found in the petals 
of flowers, where it passes the night, while the second 
British species {Chelostoma campanularum) frequents 
the pretty hare bell. The species of this genus make 
