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But the most numerous and interesting of the clay artificers are the workers of a species of social bee, the Melipona fasciculata. The Meliponae in tropical America take the place of the true Apides, to which the European hive-bee belongs, and which are here unknown; they are generally much smaller insects than the hive-bees and have no sting.
The mouth of the tube is trumpet-shaped, and at the entrance a number of pigmy bees are always stationed, apparently acting as the sentinels. A hive of the Melipona fasciculata, which I saw opened, contained about two quarts of pleasant-tasting liquid honey. The bees, as already remarked, have no sting, but they bite furiously when their colonies are disturbed.
The M. fasciculata is about a third shorter than the Apis mellifica: its colonies are composed of an immense number of individuals; the workers are generally seen collecting pollen in the same way as other bees, but great numbers are employed gathering clay. The rapidity and precision of their movements while thus engaged are wonderful.
Among the mollusks, a remarkable ribbed Melania, of the section Chilina, occurs. Ostrea distorta, Sowerby. Cinder-bed. Hemicidaris Purbeckensis, E. Forbes. Cyprides from the Middle Purbecks. a. Cypris striato-punctata, E. Forbes. b. Cypris fasciculata, E. Forbes. c. Physa Bristovii, E. Forbes. It was accompanied by a species of Perna.
FICUS FASCICULATA, as the title implies, bears its inedible fruit in bundles, branches, trunk, and exposed roots, being alike fertile, and is almost as retentive of life as the cockatoo apple. Opposita is remarkable for varied form of foliage, referred to particularly elsewhere, and for the sweetness of its fruit.
Above this, and just below the forest region, there is a dark, heath-like belt of chaparral, composed almost exclusively of Adenostoma fasciculata, a bush belonging to the rose family, from five to eight feet high, with small, round leaves in fascicles, and bearing a multitude of small white flowers in panicles on the ends of the upper branches.
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