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They vegetate in this condition for a long time, and may still be found there in May. At this period they have become more active, and, in order to complete their development, are thinking of profiting by their favourable situation near the entrance to a gallery of the Hymenoptera; when a male Anthophora comes within reach, two or three of them catch hold of him and climb on to his thorax.

Cf. Is the organ really absent? Or was there want of skill on my part? I lean towards want of skill and admit that all the game-hunting and honey-gathering Hymenoptera possess a seminal receptacle, which can be recognized by its contents, a quantity of spiral spermatozoids whirling and twisting on the slide of the microscope.

To relate them would be mere repetition; I pass them over for the sake of brevity. The renewal of a test is not sufficient: we must also vary our test. Let us, then, examine the insect's intelligence from another point of view, that of the introduction of foreign bodies into the cell. The Mason-bee is a housekeeper of scrupulous cleanliness, as indeed are all the Hymenoptera.

Assaulted by the swarm, and riddled with stings, they die without being able to escape. These great corpses cannot be dragged out by the Hymenoptera, and their putrefaction threatens to cause disease. To remedy this scourge the insects immediately cover them with propolis that is to say, the paste which they manufacture from the resin of poplars, birches, and pines.

Carpentras was not merely the country in which his wife's parents dwelt: it was, above all, a unique and privileged home for insects; not on account of its flora, but because of the soil, a kind of limestone mingled with sand and clay, a soft marl, in which the burrowing hymenoptera could easily establish their burrows and their nests.

To give an example among insects: in one great division of the Hymenoptera, the antennae, as Westwood has remarked, are most constant in structure; in another division they differ much, and the differences are of quite subordinate value in classification; yet no one will say that the antennae in these two divisions of the same order are of unequal physiological importance.

Nemertians, colours of. Neolithic period. Neomorpha, sexual difference of the beak in. Nephila, size of male. Nests, made by fishes; decoration of, by Humming-birds. Neumeister, on a change of colour in pigeons after several moultings. Neuration, difference of, in the two sexes of some butterflies and hymenoptera. Neuroptera. Neurothemis, dimorphism in.

As the males, among the Hymenoptera, are generally further advanced than the females and quit their natal cells earlier, it was important that I should witness the first exits made, so as to dispel the least shadow of a doubt.

But it is deeply interesting to discover what the will of nature may be in a different world; and this will is revealed with extraordinary clearness in the evolution of the hymenoptera, which, of all the inhabitants of this globe, possess the highest degree of intellect after that of man.

Next to these disgorgers of honey and gleaners of pollen-dust, it would be well to consult other Hymenoptera, Wasps who devote themselves to the chase and pile their cells one after the other, in a row, showing the relative age of the cocoons.