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. Another species of the same genus has a satiny white hue; but, infinite as they are in number, so most diversified are they in their habits, mode of flight, colours, and markings. Some are yellow, others bright red, green, purple, and blue. Many are bordered or spangled with metallic lines and spots of a silvery or golden lustre. Some have wings transparent as glass. One of these (the Hetaira esmeralda) is especially beautiful, having an opaque spot on its wings, of a violet and rose hue; and as this is the only part visible when the insect is flying low over the dead leaves of the darker recesses of the forest--where it is alone found--it looks like the wandering petal of a flower.