July Twentieth
The female flies and mosquitoes are the ones that bite, and it is the female and the worker bees and wasps that sting. The males of the two former groups are not provided with blood-sucking mouth parts, and the males of the bees and wasps lack stingers. When a less offensive remedy is not at hand, insect tormentors may be kept away by rubbing a piece of fat pork or bacon on one's face and hands.
July Twenty-first
The leaf-cutting bees resemble the bumblebees. Examine the bushes and trees and you will find circular holes in the leaves from which pieces have been cut. Hundreds of these tiny bits are used to line the rows of cells that the bees make in the ground or in wood. The cells are filled with pollen for the young bees to feed upon when they emerge from the eggs that are laid on top of the supply of "bee-bread."
Notes
July Twenty-second
Do you miss the rollicking song of the bobolink? Have you seen him recently in his spring dress of black and white? No; he has sung himself silent, and, as though in hope of escaping the guns of the Southern rice planters, whose crops he will plunder on his way South, he has disguised himself in a plumage of buff color, streaked with brown, quite like that of his mate.