he cultivation of the grape in this locality."

The Rose beetle (Macrodactyla subspinosa) appears in great abundance.
The various species of Buprestis are abundant; among them are the
Peach-borer (Dicerca divaricata), which may be now found flying about
peach and cherry trees; and Chrysobothris fulvogutta, and C. Harrisii,
about white pines. A large weevil (Arrhenodes septentrionalis), which
lives under the bark of the white oak, appears in June and July. The
Chinch bug begins its terrible ravages in the wheat fields. The various
species of Chrysopa or Lace-winged flies, appear during this month.

_The Insects of July._

During mid-summer the bees and wasps are very busy building their nests
and rearing their young. The Humble bees, late in June and the first of
this month, send out their first broods of workers, and about the middle
of the month the second lot of eggs are laid, which produce the
smaller-sized females and males, while eggs laid late in the month and
early in August, produce the larger-sized queens, which soon hatch.
These hibernate. The habits of their peculiar parasite, Apathus, an
insect which closely resembles the Humble bee, are still unknown.

[Illustration: 252. White-faced Wasp.]

The Leaf-cutter bee (Megachile) may be seen flying about with pieces of
rose-leaf, with which she builds, for a period of twenty days, her
cells, often thirty in number, using for this purpose, according to Mr.
F. W. Putnam's estimate,[32] at least one thousand pieces! The bees
referred to "worked so diligently that they ruined five or six
rose-bushes, not leaving a single unblighted leaf uncut, and were then
forced to take the leaves of a locust tree as a substitute."

The Paper-making wasps, of which Vespa maculata (Fig. 252), the
"White-faced wasp," is our largest species, are now completing their
nests, and feeding their young with flies. The Solitary wasp (Odynerus
albophaleratus) fills its earthen cells with minute caterpillars, which
it paralyzes with its poisonous sting. A group of mud-cells, each stored
with food for the single larva within, we once found concealed in a
deserted nest of the American Tent caterpillar. Numerous species of Wood
wasps (Crabronidae) are engaged in tunnelling the stems of the
blackberry, the elder, and syringa, and enlarging and refitting old nail
holes, and burrowing in rotten wood, storing their cells with flies,
caterpillars, aphides and spiders, according to the habit of e