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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

young amongst the combsd. The titmouse, according to the same author, will make a noise at the door of the hive, and when a bee comes out to see what is the matter, will seize and devour it. He has known them eat a dozen at a time. The swallows will assemble round the hives and devour them like grains of corne. I need only mention spiders, in whose webs they sometimes meet with their end, and earwigs and ants, which creep into the hive and steal the honeyf. Upon this subject of the enemies of bees

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

seems to be one of those mysteries of nature that has not yet been satisfactorily accounted for. Generally speaking, insects appear to have no animal heat; the temperature of their bodies being usually that of the atmosphere in which they happen to be. But bees are an exception to this rule, and produce heat in themselves. Whether they are the only insect that can do this, as John Hunter affirms, or whether others that are gregarious, such as humble-bees, wasps, and ants, may not possess the

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

-informed collector of insects, and observer of their proceedings that Apis terrestris, when labouring under Acariasisb from the numbers of a small mite (Gammasus Gymnopterorum, F.) that infest it, will take its station in an ant-hill; where beginning to scratch, and kick, and make a disturbance, the ants immediately come out to attack it, and falling foul of the mites, they destroy or carry them all off; when the bee, thus delivered from its enemies, takes its flight. In this long detail, the

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

ground beetles (Carabid ), and their fellow destroyers the Cicindelid , which last Linn , with much propriety, has denominated the tigers of the insect world, are gifted with uncommon powers of motion, and run with great rapidity. The velocity, in this respect, of ants is also very great. Mr. Delisle observed a fly so minute as to be almost invisible which ran nearly three inches in a demi-second, and in that space made 540 steps. Consequently it could take a thousand steps during one pulsation of

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

make a great din in the world. I must therefore now bespeak your attention to this department of their history. In discussing this subject, I shall consider the noises insects emit during their motions when they are feeding, or otherwise employed when they are calling or commanding or when they are under the influence of the passions; of fear, of anger, of sorrow, joy, or love. The only kind of locomotion during which these animals produce sounds, is flying: for though the hill-ants (Formica

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

of calling, commanding, or giving an alarm. I have before mentioned the noise made by the neuters or soldiers amongst the white ants, by which they keep the labourers, who answer it by a hiss, upon the alert and to their worka. This noise, which is produced by striking any substance with their mandibles, Smeathman describes as a small vibrating sound, rather shriller and quicker than the ticking of a watch. It could be distinguished, he says, at the distance of three or four feet, and

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

met with singly; yet that it is not wholly accidental, seems proved by the fact that such assemblages are generally of the same genus and even species. Sometimes, however, insects of dissimilar genera and even orders are met with together. Schmid once in February found the rare Lomechusa strumosa, Gravenhorst, (Staphylinus, L.) torpid in an ant-hill in the midst of a conglomerated lump of ants, with which it was closely interwineda. By far the greater proportion of insects pass the winter only in

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

track of the animals which serve it for food, and at the bottom of which it conceals itself, patiently waiting until some unhappy victim is precipitated down the sides of its cavern? Yet this is done by the ant-lion and another insect. Or, to omit the endless instances furnished by wasps, ants, the Termites, c., what animals can be adduced which, like the hive-bee associating in societies, build regular cities composed of cells formed with geometrical precision, divided into dwellings adapted

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

of twenty generals and from the most distant quarters, should meet at the assigned spot at the very hour fixed upon, would be more surprising than the steam-moved operations, however complex, of one of Boulton's mints. For the sake of distinctness and compression, I have confined myself in considering the number of the instincts of individual insects to a single species, the bee; but if the history of other societies of these animals wasps, ants, c. detailed in my former letters, be duly weighed

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A793.2 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 2. Text

am not aiming to show that bees have as precise a memory as ours, but only that they are endowed with some portion of this faculty, which I think the above fact proves. Should you view it in a different light, you will not deny the force of others that have already been stated in the course of our correspondence; such as the mutual greetings of ants of the same society when brought together after a separation of four monthsb; and the return of a party of bees a See the account of the mode in

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

nished with elytra, wings, antenn , legs, and every other organ usually found in the order it belongs to, is absolutely not bigger than the full stop that closes this period. In several other coleopterous genera there are also very minute species, as in Cryptophagus, Anisotoma, Agathidium c. I know no orthopterous insect that can be called extremely minute, except that remarkable one found on the Continent in the nests of ants, the Blatta Acervorum of Panzera, but now called. I believe

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

; Acarus americanus more than 1,000d; the tiger-moth (Callimorpha Caja) 1,600; some Cocci 2,000, others 4,000; the female wasp at least 30,000e; the queen bee varies considerably in the number of eggs that she produces in one season, in some cases it may amount to 40,000 or 50,000 or moref; a small hemipterous insect, resembling a little moth (Aleyrodes proletella Latr.) 200,00. But all these are left far behind by one of the white ants (Termes fatale F. bellicosus Smeath) the female of this

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

this difference than of that which takes place in the period of exclusion of the eggs of the different species of birds. Some eggs change considerably both their form and consistence previously to being hatched. M. P. Huber found that those of different species of ants when newly laid are cylindrical, opaque, and of a milky white; but just before hatching their extremities are arched, and they become transparent with only a single opaque whitish point, cloud, or zone, in their interiora. An

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

muscles which keep its powerful jaws in constant play. The larv , indeed, of some Diptera have a membranous head; but their mandibles, which serve also as legs, are not grinders, but merely claws, the muscles of which require less powerful supporta. Under this head it may be proper to observe, that generally larv are opaque; but some, as those of ants, and a few Lepidopterab, are diaphanous. That of Corethra crystallina (Tipula De Geer) is so beautifully transparent as to re a The larv described

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

As these animals are found in almost every ditch, you will doubtless lose no time in examining for yourself an instance of so singular a construction. Feelers (PALPI). In the orders Diptera and Hymenoptera are many larv in which these organs have not been certainly discovered; yet Reaumur in that of a common fly (M. meridiana L.) found four retractile nipplesa which seem analogous to them; and Latreille has observed, that below the mandibles of those of ants are four minute points, two on each

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

but Bonnet ascertained, that if cut off very closely, the larva sometimes died in consequence, whilst no such result followed a similar operation on hairy larv . We learn from Reaumura, that some spinous larv of saw-flies (Tenthredo L.) lose their spines at the last change of their skin; and from Madame Merian, that that of Attacus Erythrin before mentioned loses also at the same period the six tremendous black spikes that arm its black and yellow larv . The grubs of ants that are destined to

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

(Cryptus Jur.), which have but a small stock of silk, compose the outer cocoon of thick silken cords crossing at right angles, and forming an oval net; which at the same time that it protects them effectually from the ants, which are always ready to attack them, demands much less silk than a covering of a closer texture. But the tender nymph itself requires to be inclosed in a case of a softer and more delicate substance; and accordingly the inner cocoon is composed of fine silk, woven so closely that

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

Neuroptera: including the well-known tribes of earwigs, cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, lanthorn-flies, froghoppers (Cicada L.), bugs, plant-lice, dragon-flies, day-flies, white ants, c. Of these, as in the former subdivision, the pup are equally capable of eating and moving with the larv , which they resemble, except in having the rudiments of wings, or of wings and elytra. The pup of the three orders first enumerated differ from those of the Neuroptera in resembling the perfect insect

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

of the cocoon, and through the silk-lined cavity, till it is protruded for about one-third of its length out of the opening in the bark, and into the aira. An exception to the general rule that the rupturing of the cocoon is the business of the inclosed insect itself is met with amongst ants; the workers of which not only feed the young, but actually make an aperture in their cocoons, cutting the threads with their mandibles with admirable dexterity and patience, one by one, at the time they

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A793.3 Beagle Library: Kirby, William and Spence, William. 1815-26. An introduction to entomology. 4 vols. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. vol. 3. Text

ants, whose males are often many thousand times less than the females, when the latter are distended with eggsc. Accidental differences in the size of the sexes sometimes arise: as when the female larva has, from any cause, been deprived of its proper supply of food, it will occasionally be less than the male. De Geer has stated a circumstance with respect to the Aphides that produce galls, that should be mentioned under this head the first, or mother female, is larger than any of her progeny ever