514 
II V M E X 0 P T E R A . 
and the limits of this work will not allow me now to enlarge 
upon them. I shall not, therefore, attempt to show how 
admirably the Ilyinenoptera are fitted, in the formation of 
all their parts, for their appointed tasks. If any of my 
readers are curious to learn this, and to witness for them- 
selves the various arts, resources, and contrivances resorted 
to by these insects, let them go abroad in the summer, and 
watch them during their labors. They will then see the 
saw-fly making holes in leaves with her double key-hole 
saws, and the horn-tail boring with her auger into the solid 
trunks of trees ; — they will not fail to observe and admire 
the untiring scrutiny of the ichneumon-flies, those little busy- 
bodies, forever on the alert, and prying into every place 
to find the lurking caterpillar, grub, or maggot, wherein 
to thrust their eggs; — the curious swellings produced by 
the gall-flies, and inhabited by their young ; — the clay cells 
of the mud-wasp, plastered against the walls of our houses, 
each one containing a single egg, together with a large 
number of living spiders, caught and imprisoned therein 
solely for the use of the little mason’s young, which thus 
have constantly before them an ample supply of fresh pro- 
visions ; — the holes of the stump-wasp, stored with hundreds 
of horse-flies for the same purpose ; — the skill of the leaf- 
cutter bee in cutting out the semicircular pieces of leaves 
for her patchwork nest; — the thimble-shaped cells of the 
ground-bee, hidden, in clusters, under some loose stone in 
the fields, made of little fragments of tempered clay, and 
stored with bee-bread, the work of many weeks for the 
industrious laborer ; — the waxen cells made by the honey- 
bee, without any teaching, upon purely mathematical prin- 
ciples, measured only with her antennai, and wrought with 
her jaws and tongue; — the water-tight nests of the hornet 
and wasp, natural paper-makers from the beginning of time, 
who are not obliged to use rags or ropes in the formation 
of their durable paper combs, but have applied to this pur- 
pose fibres of wood, a material that the art of man has not 
