Footnote 4122: [(return)]
KNOX'S Ceylon, Part i, ch. vi, p.24.
Footnote 4123: [(return)]
A. goudotti? Bennett.
Footnote 4131: [(return)]
Dr. HOOKER, in his Himalayan Journal (vol. i. p. 20) is of opinion that the nests of the termites are not independent structures, but that their nucleus is "the debris of clumps of bamboos or the trunks of large trees which these insects have destroyed." He supposes that the dead tree falls leaving the stump coated with sand, which the action of the weather soon fashions into a cone. But independently of the fact that the "action of the weather" produces little or no effect on the closely cemented clay of the white ants' nest, they may be daily seen constructing their edifices in the very form of a cone, which they ever after retain. Besides which, they appear in the midst of terraces and fields where no trees are to be seen: and Dr. Hooker seems to overlook the fact that the termites rarely attack a living tree; and although their nests may be built against one, it continues to flourish not the less for their presence.
Footnote 4161: [(return)]
For these particulars of the termes monoceros, I am indebted to Mr. Thwaites, of the Roy. Botanic Garden at Kandy.
Footnote 4171: [(return)]
It belongs to the genus Pelopæus, P. Spinolæ, of St. Fargean. The Ampulex compressa, which drags about the larvæ of cockroaches into which it has implanted its eggs, belongs, to the same family.
Footnote 4172: [(return)]
Mr. E.L. Layard has given an interesting account of this Mason wasp in the Annals and Magazine of Nat. History for May, 1853. "I have frequently," he says, "selected one of these flies for observation, and have seen their labours extend over a period of a fortnight or twenty days; sometimes only half a cell was completed in a day, at others as much as two. I never saw more than twenty cells in one nest, seldom indeed that number, and whence the caterpillars were procured was always to me a mystery. I have seen thirty or forty brought in of a species which I knew to be very rare in the perfect state, and which I had sought for in vain, although I knew on what plant they fed.
"Then again how are they disabled by the wasp, and yet not injured so as to cause their immediate death? Die they all do, at least all that I have ever tried to rear, after taking them from the nest.
"The perfected fly never effects its egress from the closed aperture, through which the caterpillars were inserted, and when cells are placed end to end, as they are in many instances, the outward end of each is always selected. I cannot detect any difference in the thickness in the crust of the cell to cause this uniformity of practice. It is often as much as half an inch through, of great hardness, and as far as I can see impervious to air and light. How then does the enclosed fly always select the right end, and with what secretion is it supplied to decompose this mortar?"
Footnote 4181: [(return)]
It ought to be remembered in travelling in the forests of Ceylon that sal volatile applied immediately is a specific for the sting of a wasp.
Footnote 4182: [(return)]
At the January (1839) meeting of the Entomological Society, Mr. Whitehouse exhibited portions of a wasps' nest from Ceylon, between seven and eight feet long and two feet in diameter, and showed that the construction of the cells was perfectly analogous to those of the hive bee, and that when connected each has a tendency to assume a circular outline. In one specimen where there were three cells united the outer part was circular, whilst the portions common to the three formed straight walls. From this Singhalese nest Mr. Whitehouse demonstrated that the wasps at the commencement of their comb proceed slowly, forming the bases of several together, whereby they assume the hexagonal shape, whereas, if constructed separately, he thought each single cell would be circular. See Proc. Ent. Soc., vol. iii. p. 16.
Footnote 4183: [(return)]
A gentleman connected with the department of the Surveyor-General writes to me that he measured a honey-comb which he found fastened to the overhanging branch of a small tree in the forest near Adam's Peak, and found it nine links of his chain or about six feet in length and a foot in breadth where it was attached to the branch, but tapering towards the other extremity. "It was a single comb with a layer of cells on either side, but so weighty that the branch broke by the strain."
Footnote 4184: [(return)]
Xylocopa tenuiscapa, Westw.; Another species found in Ceylon is the X. latipes, Drury.