opportunity for the entire community to find employment, either in enlarging their nests, when they build them, or in securing them from the intrusion of water, or repelling enemies, or feeding the young, and accumulating stores. In collecting pollen they are often covered as if they had rolled themselves in it, and this they brush from their hairy bodies chiefly with their posterior legs; sometimes they return in this disguised condition, and free themselves from it only at home; in other cases they bring it home collected in little masses upon the corbiculum, or basket, of the posterior shanks. They may be often caught thus laden, and I once captured a large female of _B. terrestris_, with the shanks and plantæ of both intermediate and posterior legs covered with masses of thick clay, required doubtless at home for some domestic repairs. The instinct of these bees teaches them that where the tube of the flower is too narrow for the introduction of their body, and too long for even their long proboscis to reach the nectarium at the bottom, they may get at the honey by piercing a hole near that organ, which they know where to find, and thus they readily get at the treasure that they seek, lapping it through the aperture and carrying it off. If, in their collecting excursions, they are intercepted by heavy rains, or loiter far away too long until the twilight closes, they will pass the night away from home, and return laden with their gatherings as soon as the warmth of the sun reanimates them to activity; thus they will often sleep in flowers, and a nest therefore taken at night is not always a sure indication in those found within it, of its complete population. In their amours, the autumnal females evince considerable coquetry to attract their partners: they place themselves upon some branch in the most fervid sunshine, and here they practise their cajoleries in the vibrations of their wings, and allure them by their attractive postures. The males are simultaneously abroad, and soon perceive them. The seduction is complete, and they pounce down upon them with impetuosity, but their brief indulgence terminates in death, for with his abating vigour the female repulses him, and he falls to the ground never to take wing again. Amongst their insect enemies the _Dipterous_ genera, _Volucella_ and _Conops_, are very destructive to their larvæ,—the first of these genera in its colouring greatly resembling the species upon which it preys. Foxes, weasels, field-mice, all prey upon them, and, like schoolboys, often destroy the bee for the sake of its honey-bag, an instance of which I have before recorded as illustrative of their endurance of the loss of a considerable portion of the body without its being fatal.