The order of insects to which the Ants, Bees, and Wasps belong includes a very large number of species. All these are provided with four membranous wings, alike in consistency, and provided with comparatively few nervures. The wings are usually of small size, as compared with the dimensions of the insects, but are very powerful, owing to the fore and hind pair being connected together during flight by a series of little links; and the flight of the insects is usually very rapid. These insects pass through a perfect metamorphosis, the pupa being always inactive; the jaws are provided with mandibles, though a proboscis, or sucking-tube, is also present, and the abdomen of the female is armed with an ovipositor, or boring instrument, which is frequently modified into a powerful sting, used to deposit the eggs in their proper position. One peculiarity is that several species of ants, bees, and wasps live in large communities, in which the bulk of the inhabitants, on whom most of the work of the nest falls, are imperfectly developed and usually sterile females, called neuters, or workers. This arrangement is also met with in the White Ants, which belong to the order of Lace-winged Insects. Among both the Ants and White Ants the neuters are unprovided with wings; but these organs are present in the fully developed males and females, though soon cast.
Photo by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S., Regent's Park.
SAW-FLY.
One of the commonest of the larger British species is a blackish hairy insect, measuring rather more than an inch in expanse, with transparent wings bordered with brown.
Photo by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S., Regent's Park.
MARBLE GALL-FLY AND GALL.
Found on oak, and not unlike the foreign gall used for making ink.
A great variety of other insects also belong to this order, such as Saw-flies, Gall-flies, and an immense number of parasitic species, generally called Ichneumon-flies, among which are some of the smallest insects known.