374 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
The crickets are represented by several most repulsive forms. What can be 
more frightful than the. mole cricket? Such an animal as this is a blot on 
creation. Some of the Gryllidce are extremely predaceous and carnivorous. I 
have noticed one, especially, which seems to frequent the native huts, lodging 
generally in the thatched roof. When I have been writing at my table by the 
light of a lamp and some fat, fluffy, stupid moth singed and stupefied with the 
oil is gyrating on the table, the predatory Gryllus will pounce on it from the 
roof and literally tear it to pieces before one’s eyes. 
Large carpenter bees with black bodies and violet wings, and apparently the 
ordinary honey bee (Apis') are common. I imagine the honey bee of Central 
Africa to belong to the genus Apis because it is possessed of a sting which 
is not the case, I believe, amongst some of the honey bees of other genera 
found usually in tropical climates. These wild bees are present in almost 
all the forested regions and make delicious honey and excellent wax. Wax 
indeed is one of the articles of export from British Central Africa, though the 
natives do not pay as much heed to collecting it as they might. These honey 
bees can be a great nuisance, sometimes, as they are very ill-tempered. In 
my house at Zomba they were continually trying to build hives in the chimneys 
and at times would swarm there in numbers, becoming so angry at being 
smoked out that they would attack and sting all who came near them. On one 
occasion when travelling along the Upper Shire a few of my porters and myself 
stopped to rest under a shady tree. We were at once attacked by a swarm 
of bees who stung us violently and whom we could only get rid of after running 
for nearly a quarter of a mile through the dense grass. I received thirteen 
stings on the head and neck. These being at once extracted and the places 
rubbed with extract of witch-hazel, I felt no after ill effects. 
The female of an ugly creature possibly belonging to the genus Scolia 
makes its appearance during the rainy season in houses, attracted by the light. 
It has an extremely long flexible body, the end of which is armed with a 
formidable sting. The mason wasp is a familiar sight. It has dark indigo-blue 
wings, yellow abdomen and black and orange legs. This wasp stings and 
benumbs caterpillars and spiders, then packs them into a mud cell which it 
has previously built on the wall of a house or in some such appropriate shelter. 
Having deposited an egg in the cell together with the grub it seals it up with 
more mud and continues to build other cells until quite a large excrescence 
of red mud is gathered together. As the young grubs hatch so they gradually 
consume the stupefied but not dead victim. They then push their way out 
through the top of the cell and emerge as the perfect insect. It is said that the 
male of this species is very much smaller than the female and there is some 
doubt as to its identity. 
The mason wasp is rather a nuisance, however much good it may do by 
destroying caterpillars, as it invades all one’s premises whenever a door or 
window is open and is perpetually building a nest on the back of books or 
on nicely-coloured walls, on picture frames, or even inside the piano if it can 
get there. It is also a great fidget, buzzing round and round one’s head in 
circling flights ; in fact when a mason wasp has got into the room I have to call 
servants to catch it or drive it out before I can resume my work. Nevertheless 
they are good-tempered insects not readily induced to sting, whereas the pale 
green-grey Bclonogaster wasps, which build their papery nests of very long 
tubes on the roof of one’s dwelling, are easily roused to hostility and sting 
fearfully. These are the insects which are mentioned by so many European 
