. Insect architecture : to which are added, miscellanies, on the ravages, the preservation for purposes of study, and the classification, of insects . the greatest difficulty in explaining the governingprinciple of the minds of the inferior animals. Themason-bee makes her nest by an invariable rule ; themodel is in her mind, as it has been in the mind of herrace from their first creation : they have learnt nothingby experience. But the mode in which they accomplishthis task varies according to the situations in which theyare placed. They appear to have a glimmering of 44 IXSECT AECniTECTLSE. r
. Insect architecture : to which are added, miscellanies, on the ravages, the preservation for purposes of study, and the classification, of insects . the greatest difficulty in explaining the governingprinciple of the minds of the inferior animals. Themason-bee makes her nest by an invariable rule ; themodel is in her mind, as it has been in the mind of herrace from their first creation : they have learnt nothingby experience. But the mode in which they accomplishthis task varies according to the situations in which theyare placed. They appear to have a glimmering of 44 IXSECT AECniTECTLSE. reason, employed as an accessary and instrument of theirinstinct. The structure, when finished, consisted of a wall ofclay supported by two contiguous bricks, enclosing sixchambers, within each of which a mass of pollen, ratherlarger than a cherry-stone, was deposited, together withan egg, from which in due time a grub was to what has been recorded by preceding natu-ralists, with respect to other mason-bees, we found thecells in this instance quite parallel and perpendicular;but it may also be remarked, that the bee itself was a. Cells of Mason Bees, built, in the first and second figures, by OsmiabicovTiis between bricks, and in the third, by Megachile muraria in thefluting of an old pilaster.—About half the natural size. species altogether different from the one which we havedescribed above as the Anthophora retusa, and agreedwith the figure of the one we caught quarrying the clay—(Os7nia hicornis). There was one circumstance attending the proceedingsof this mason-bee which struck us not a little, though we(ould not exj>lain it to our own satisfaction. Every timeshe left her nest for the purpose of procuring a freshsupply of materials, she paid a regular visit to the blos-soms of a lilac tree which grew near. Had theseblossoms afibrded a supply of pollen, with Avhich shecould have replenished her cells, we could have easily MASON-BEES. 45 understood her
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, booksubje, booksubjectentomology
