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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915 edition. Excerpt: ...Among the guild of wood-workers, the most powerful is the Carpenter-bee (Xylocopa violacea)3 a very large Bee of formidable appearance, clad in black velvet with violet-coloured wings. The mother gives her larvas as a dwelling a cylindrical gallery which she digs in rotten wood. Useless timber lying exposed to the air, vine-poles, large logs of fire-wood seasoning out of doors, heaped up in front of the farm-house porch, stumps of trees, vinestocks and big branches of all kinds are her favourite building-yards. A solitary and industrious worker, she bores, bit by bit, circular passages the width of one's thumb, as clear-cut as though they were made with an auger. A heap of saw-dust accumulates on the ground and bears witness to the severity of the task. Usually, the same aperture is the entrance to two or three parallel corridors. With several galleries there is accommodation for the entire laying, though each gallery is quite short; and the Bee thus avoids those long series which always create difficulties when the moment of hatching arrives. The laggards and the insects eager to emerge are less likely to get in each other's way. '2.205 pounds avoirdupois.--Translator's Note. 2The hero of La Fontaine's fable, Le Gland et la Citrouille, who wondered why the acorns grew on such tall trees and the pumpkins on such low vines, until he fell asleep under one of the latter and a pumpkin fell upon his nose.--Translator's Note. sCf. The Life of the Spider: chap..--Translator's Note. After obtaining the dwelling, the Carpenter-bee behaves like the Osmia who is in possession of a reed. Provisions are collected, the egg is laid and the chamber is walled in front with a saw-dust partition. The work is pursued in this way until the two or three passages...

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