There is a very pretty English insect which admirably exemplifies the power of the natural scissors. This is the Great Green Grasshopper (_Acrida viridissima_), which is equally voracious in all its stages of existence. It is always ready to use these jaws, and I do not recommend the reader to allow his finger to get between them, or their points will probably meet. One of these insects, indeed (_Decticus griseus_), has derived the name of Wart-biter from its supposed use in curing warts. All that was needful was to catch a Wart-biter, and hold one of the warts to its jaws. It was sure to seize the wart, and bite it smartly, and there was a firm belief that any one thus bitten would be freed from the unsightly excrescence. The bite of the shear-like jaws caused much pain at the time, and this very pain had in all probability something to do with the cure. * * * * * AN admirable example of the insect jaws used as scissors is to be found in the well-known Leaf-cutter Bees, insects belonging to the genus Megachile. They make their nests in burrows, sometimes in wood, and sometimes in the ground, and form them in a very singular manner. After fixing upon a suitable burrow, the Bee goes off to a tree, generally a rose, and, using her jaws just as a tailor uses his shears, cuts off a nearly semicircular piece of leaf, flies away with it to her home, and, by dint of bending, pushing, and pulling it, she forces it to the bottom of the cell. Successive pieces of leaf follow, until she has made a thimble-shaped cell, and she then places at its end an egg and a supply of honey and pollen. Cell after cell succeeds, each being introduced into its predecessor just as thimbles are packed. Judging from a specimen in my collection, there are about eight layers of leaves to form the walls of the cell, and the average length of each piece of leaf rather exceeds half an inch. The entire length of the cell-group is two inches and a half. The leaf-slices are always cut from the edge, and, in my specimen of the nest, the serrated outer edges of the leaves are all in one direction. Should any of my readers find one of these nests, it will be as well for them to dip a needle point into diamond cement, and introduce it under the outermost coating of leaves. Otherwise, when the leaves are dry, and the insects break their way into the open air, the cells will probably fall to pieces.