the earth. Many build in houses, or pierce their mud walls till they look as if riddled with shot. Others make holes in the ground, especially in sandy places. Others, again, construct their habitations of clay, and fasten them to the boughs of trees or to buildings. There are, indeed, mason bees, carpenter bees, and miner bees and wasps.
Watch the little, pale green bombex, or sand-wasp, at work, throwing out with its fore-feet jets of sand from the hole it is forming in the sloping bank. In a wonderfully short time the female miner has formed a gallery two or three inches in length. Out she backs, making a few turns round the entrance to admire her work—or, probably, to take note of the locality—and then away she flies. She may be absent for a few minutes, or perhaps for an hour, according to her success in hunting. At length back she comes with a big fly in her grasp, benumbed by her sting. She carries it in, lays an egg in the body, which will serve as food for the soft footless grub soon to be hatched, and then closing the entrance, sets to work to form a new nursery like the first, which she will furnish in the same careful manner. It is curious how she can find her way back, for often she has to go half a mile before she can find a fly to suit her purpose.
Another species,—the Monedula signata,—as large as a hornet, is particularly useful in carrying off the teasing flies, the bloodthirsty motucas, which buzz round the voyager on the Amazon when at anchor near a sand-bank. Bates was rather startled by seeing one fly directly at his face, on which it had espied a motuca, and which it carried off, holding it tightly to its breast.
The pelopaeus wasp builds a nest of clay, shaped like a pouch, two inches in length, and attaches it to a branch. It forms the clay in little round pellets, kneading it with its mandibles into a convenient shape, and humming cheerfully while engaged in its work. On arriving with the ball of moist clay it lays it on the edge of the cell, and then spreads it out round the circular rim by means of the lower lip, guided by the mandibles—sitting astride while at work. On finishing each addition it takes a turn round, patting the sides with its feet inside and out, before flying off for a fresh pellet. It feeds on small spiders, which it reduces to a half dead state by its sting, thus to serve as food for its progeny.
One bee,—the Trypoxylon aurifrons,—builds a nest of clay like a squat round bottle or carafe; generally in rows, one beside the other, on a branch, or in the corners of a building.
The melipona bees are the most numerous of the honey-producing insects, their colonies being composed of vast numbers of individuals. They are smaller than the English hive-bee, and have no sting. The workers collect pollen as do other bees, but a great number are employed in gathering clay for forming walls as an outer protection to their nests. They first scrape the clay with their fore-mandibles, passing it on to the second pair of feet, and then to the large foliated expansions of the hind-shanks, patting it in the process, till the little hodsmen have as much as they can carry, when they fly off with their loads to their nests. One species builds a tubular gallery of clay of a trumpet shape at the mouth. Here a number of the pigmy bees are stationed to act the part of sentinels.
Thus the melipona bees are masons as well as workers in wax and pollen gatherers. Although they have no sting, they defend their habitations, and bite furiously when disturbed. Bates found forty-five species of these bees in different parts of the country, and one hundred and forty of other species. Several of them were attended by drones, which deposit their ova in the cells of the working bees, some of them having the dress and general appearance of their victims.
Butterflies.
This is a region of magnificent butterflies. In the neighbourhood of Para alone seven hundred species have been found. Many seldom leave the shady paths which pierce the forests; others, however, occasionally come forth into the broad sunlight and more open glades. See the slender Morpho menelaus, with splendid metallic blue wings seven inches in expanse, flapping them as does a bird as it flies along.
Far surpassing it, however, is the Morpho rhetenor; which, conscious of its beauty, revels in the sunlight, but seldom ventures nearer than twenty feet from the ground. So dazzling a lustre have the upper wings of this butterfly, that when it flaps them occasionally, and the blue surface flashes in the sunlight, it may be seen a quarter of a mile off.