United States or Cyprus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is exactly the same structure which we saw in the Ammophila's Grey Worm. My old notes give the following description of the caterpillars found in the nest of Eumenes Amedei: "a pale green or, less often, a yellowish body, covered with short white hairs; head wider than the front segment, dead-black and also bristling with hairs. Time and distance have not altered the nature of the provisions.
The reason seemed a good one; and I let it go at that. In the end, another idea occurred to me and made me doubt whether my rebuffs were always due to clumsy accidents. The Eumenes' cells are crammed with game: there are ten caterpillars in the cell of Eumenes Amedei and fifteen in that of Eumenes pomiformis.
But let us examine the shapeless mass more closely and we shall perceive the number of chambers composing the habitation with the funnelled mouths, each quite distinct and each furnished with its gravel stopper set in the cement. The Chalicodoma of the Walls employs the same building methods as Eumenes Amedei: in the courses of cement she fixes, on the outside, small stones of minor bulk.
Buondelmonte de' Buondelmonti, a young nobleman from the upper Val d'Arno and a member of the Guelph party, was to marry a daughter of the house of Amedei, staunch Ghibelline supporters, and the wedding day was fast approaching; one day the young Guelph was met upon the street by a lady of the Donati family, also a Guelph, who reproached him for his intended union with one of the hated party, and urged him to marry her own daughter, Ciulla, who was far more desirable.
It may well be imagined that the Amedei were enraged at this; the powerful Uberti and all the other Ghibelline families in Florence, about twenty-four in all, joined with them, and they swore to kill the fickle young lover on sight.
Should you pass some little garden-wall, facing south, in a sun-scorched corner, look at the stones that are not covered with plaster, look at them one by one, especially the largest; examine the masses of boulders, at no great height from the ground, where the fierce rays have heated them to the temperature of a Turkish bath; and, perhaps, if you seek long enough, you will light upon the structure of Eumenes Amedei.
There we have a summary sketch of the Eumenes. My part of the country possesses two species: the larger, Eumenes Amedei, Lep., measures nearly an inch in length; the other, Eumenes pomiformis, Fabr., is a reduction of the first to the scale of one-half.
As the two sexes differ in size, although to a lesser degree than in the case of Eumenes Amedei, I am inclined to think that those two well-filled cells belonged to females and that the males' cells must have a less sumptuous table. Not having seen for myself, I am content to set down this mere suspicion.
In this way he might obtain what sum he pleased from the lady’s friends for the price of exorcizing her; and having mutually agreed upon this plan, Roderigo disappeared. Not many days elapsed before it was reported in Florence that the daughter of Messer Ambrogio Amedei, a lady married to Buonajuto Tebalducci, was possessed by the devil.
Now Eumenes Amedei requires a first-class cement, even better than that of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, for the work, when finished, does not receive the thick covering wherewith the Mason-bee protects her cluster of cells. And therefore the cupola-builder, as often as she can, uses the highway as her stone-pit. With the mortar, flints are needed.
Word Of The Day