The carder-bees may be easily distinguished from their congeners (of the same genus), by being not unlike the colour of the withered moss with which they build their nests, having the fore part of their back a dull orange, and hinder part ringed with different shades of greyish yellow. They are not so large as the common humble-bee (Bombus terrestris, LATR.), but rather shorter and thicker in the body than the common hive-bee (Apis mellifica).

LAPIDARY-BEES.

A bee still more common, perhaps, than the carder, is the orange-tailed bee, or lapidary (Bombus lapidaria), readily known by its general black colour and reddish orange tail. It builds its nest sometimes in stony ground, but prefers a heap of stones such as are gathered off grass fields, or are piled up near quarries. Unlike the carder, the lapidary carries to its nest bits of moss, which are very neatly arranged into a regular oval. These insects associate in their labours; and they make honey with great industry. The individuals of a nest are more numerous than the carders, and likewise more pertinaciously vindictive. About two years ago, we discovered a nest of these bees at Compton-Basset, in Wiltshire, in the centre of a heap of limestone rubbish; but owing to the brisk defensive warfare of their legionaries, we could not obtain a view of the interior. It was not even safe to approach within many yards of the place, and we do not exaggerate when we say that several of them pursued us most pertinaciously about a quarter of a mile *.

HUMBLE-BEES.

The common humble-bee (Bombus terrestris) is precisely similar in its economy to the two preceding species, with this difference, that it forms its nest underground like the common wasp, in an excavated chamber, to which a winding passage leads, of from one to two feet, and of diameter sufficient to allow of two bees passing. The cells have no covering beside the vault of the excavation and patches of coarse wax similar to that of the carder-bee.

* J. R.

SOCIAL-WASPS.

The nest of the common wasp (Vespa vulgaris) attracts more or less the attention of everybody; but its interior architecture is not so well known as it deserves to be, for its singular ingenuity, in which it rivals even that of the hive-bee (Apis mellifica). In their general economy, the social, or republican wasps, closely resemble the humble-bee (Bombus), every colony being founded by a single female who has survived the winter, to the rigours of which all her summer associates of males and working wasps uniformly fall victims. Nay, out of three hundred females which may be found in one vespiary, or wasp's nest, towards the close of autumn, scarcely ten or a dozen survive till the ensuing spring, at which season they awake from their hybernal lethargy, and begin with ardour the labours of colonization.

It may be interesting to follow one of these mother wasps through her several operations, in which she merits more the praise of industry than the queen of a bee-hive, who does nothing, and never moves without a numerous train of obedient retainers, always ready to execute her commands and to do her homage. The mother wasp, on the contrary, is at first alone, and is obliged to perform every species of drudgery herself.

Her first care, after being roused to activity by the returning warmth of the season, is to discover a place suitable for her intended colony; and, accordingly, in the spring, wasps may be seen prying into every hole of a hedge-bank, particularly where field-mice have burrowed. Some authors report

that she is partial to the forsaken galleries of the mole, but this does not accord with our observations, as we have never met with a single vespiary in any situation likely to have been frequented by moles.

But though we cannot assert the fact, we think it highly probable that the deserted nest of the fieldmouse, which is not uncommon in hedge-banks, may be sometimes appropriated by a mother wasp as an excavation convenient for her purpose. Yet, if she does make choice of the burrow of a field-mouse, it requires to be afterwards considerably enlarged in the interior chamber, and the entrance gallery very much narrowed.

The desire of the wasp to save herself the labour of excavation, by forming her nest where other animals have burrowed, is not without a parallel in the actions of quadrupeds, and even of birds. In the splendid continuation of Wilson's American Ornithology, by Charles L. Bonaparte (whose scientific pursuits have thrown round that name a beneficent lustre, pleasingly contrasted with his uncle's glory), there is an interesting example of this instinctive adoption of the labours of others. "In the TransMississippian territories of the United States, the burrowing-owl resides exclusively in the villages of the marmot, or prairie-dog, whose excavations are so commodious, as to render it unnecessary that the owl should dig for himself, as he is said to do where no burrowing animals exist*. The villages of the prairie-dog are very numerous and variable in their extent, sometimes covering only a few acres, and at others spreading over the surface of the country for miles together. They are composed of slightly-elevated mounds, having the form of a truncated cone, about two feet in width at the base, and seldom rising as high as eighteen inches from the surface of the soil. The

*The owl observed by Vieillot in St. Domingo digs itself a burrow two feet in depth, at the bottom of which it deposits its eggs upon a bed of moss.

entrance is placed either at the top or on the side, and the whole mound is beaten down externally, especially at the summit, resembling a much-used footpath. From the entrance, the passage into the mound descends vertically for one or two feet, and is thence continued obliquely downwards until it terminates in an apartment, within which the industrious prairie-dog constructs, on the approach of cold weather, a comfortable cell for his winter's sleep. The cell, which is composed of fine dry grass, is globular in form, with an opening at top, capable of admitting the finger; and the whole is so firmly compacted, that it might, without injury, be rolled over the floor*.”

In case of need, the wasp is abundantly furnished by nature with instruments for excavating a burrow out of the solid ground, as she no doubt most commonly does,-digging the earth with her strong mandibles, and carrying it off or pushing it out as she proceeds. The entrance-gallery is about an inch or less in diameter, and usually runs in a winding or zigzag direction, from one to two feet in depth. In the chamber to which this gallery leads, and which, when completed, is from one to two feet in diameter, the mother wasp lays the foundations of her city, beginning with the walls.

The building materials employed by wasps were long a matter of conjecture to scientific inquirers; for the bluish-grey papery substance of the whole structure has no resemblance to any sort of wax employed by bees for a similar purpose. Now that the discovery has been made, we can with difficulty bring ourselves to believe that a naturalist so acute and indefatigable as M. Réaumur should have, for twenty years, as he tells us, endeavoured, without success, * American Ornithology, by Charles Lucien Bonaparte. Vol.i.

p. 69.

F