Bramble-Bees and Others

name still used in our classifications, entomologists troubled very little about the live animal; they worked on corpses, a dissecting-room method which does not yet seem to be drawing to an en

hy. Structure was everything; life, with its highest prerogatives, intellect, i

glass, analyzes the dead body and names the worker without knowing its work. Hence the number of appellations the least of whose faults is that they are unpleasant to the ear, certain of them, indeed, being gross misnomers. Have we not, for instance, seen the name of Lithurgus, or stone-worker, given to a Bee who works in wood and nothing but wood? Such absurdities will be

the same passion in a very high degree, I see no reason to treat the Anthidia as more zealous looters than the others. If he had known their cotton nests, perhaps the Scan

resin, without ever having recourse to cotton. Faithful to my extremely simple principle of defining the worker, as far as possible, by his work, I will call the members of this guild the Resin-bees. Thus confining myself to the data supplied by my observations, I divide the Anthidium

ntatum, LATR., A. bellicosum, LEP., A. quadrilobum, LEP., and A. Latreillii, LEP. The first two make their nests in deserted Snail-shells; the other two shelter their groups of cells sometimes in the ground, sometimes under a large stone. We will first discuss t

t behind him a rich collection of empty shells scattered all round his hay mattress under the slab, there is always a hope of finding some Snail-shells plugged with mud and, here and there, mixed with them, a few Snail-shells closed with resin. The two Bees

ssive dampness of the subsoil tells us that it is useless to look lower down. Sometimes at the moment of removing the first layer, sometimes at a depth of eighteen inches, we shall find the Osmia's Snail-shell and, much more rarely, the Resin-bee's. Above all, patience! The job is none of the most fruitful; nor is it exactly an agreeable one. By dint of tu

gh along the winding stair. I hold up the doubtful shell to the light. If it is completely transparent, I know that it is empty and I put it back to serve for future nests. If the second whorl is opaque, the spiral contains something. What does it contain? Earth washed in by the rain? Remnants of the putrefied Snail? That remains to be seen. With a little pocket-trowel, the inquisitorial implement which always accompanies me, I make a wide window in the middle of the final whorl. If I see

l-shell. She is a contemporary of the Three-horned Osmia, who begins operations in the last week of April, and often occupies the same stone-heap, settling in the next shell. She is well-advised to start work early

would as surely apply to any shell of sufficient capacity, if the places which I explore possessed others, as witness a nest which my son Emile has sent me from somewhere near Marseilles. This time, the Resin-bee is settled in Helix algira, the mo

much farther back, so that, in order to see the terminal partition, we must, as I have said, make a lateral inlet. The position of this boundary-ceiling, which may come farther forward or farther back, depends on the variable diameter of the passage. The cells of the cocoons require a certain length and a certain breadth, which the mother finds by going higher up or lower down in the

nted with a gum the nature of which has to be ascertained. It is an amber-coloured material, semi-transparent, brittle, soluble in spirits of wine and burning wit

near the houses. Moreover, among the vegetable remains which we shall see assisting in the protection of the nest, we often find the juniper's catkins and needles. As the resin-insect is economical of its time and does not fly far from the quarters familiar to it, the gum must have been collected on the shrub at whose

etimes she lights upon treasures that give her work a more original character. The Marseilles nest shows me, neatly encrusted amid the bits of gravel, a tiny whole landshell, Pupa cineres. A nest in my own neighbourhood provides me with a pretty Snail-shell, Helix striata, forming a rose-pattern in the mid

Helix aspersa, have almost the same protective materials. I see bits of gravel, the size of a lentil, and the catkins and needles of the brown-berried juniper predominating. Next come the dry excretions of the Snail and a few rare little land-shells. A similar jumble of more or less everything found near the nest forms, as we know, the barricade of the Manicate Cotton-bee, who is also an adept at using the Snail's stercoral droppings after these have been dried in the sun. Let us observe finally that these dissimilar materials are heaped together without any ceme

he moderate shells, such as Helix nemoralis, in which the resin lid is level with the orifice. My excavations in the stone-heaps supply me with an almost equal number of nests with and without defensive embankments. Among the Cotton-bees, the Manica

ingly restricted and is usually limited to two. The front room, which is larger because the width of the passage goes on increasing, is the abode of a male, superior in size to the other sex; the less spacious back room contains a female. I have already drawn attention in an earlier chapter to the wonder

Snail-shell in a hole in the wall or under the stones, it is impossible to decide to which of the two species the nest belongs. The only way to obtain exact information is to break the shell and split the cocoons in February, at which time the nest

ide almost smooth and sometimes ornamented with little shells; the same barricade-not always present-of various kinds of rubbish; the same division into two rooms of unequal size occup

of a couple of eggs apiece, is it necessary that there should be a new home for each shift? Is the half-fluid resin unsuitable for the wide-spanned roofs which would have to be constructed when the diameter of the helical passage exceeded certain limits? Is the gathering of the cement too wearisome a task to l

one, the gum-worker builds her nest at the same period as the mud-worker; but there is no fear of mutual encroachments, for the two Bees, working next door to each other, watch

ight at the far end of the spiral, but it might suit the Osmia, who knows how to fill the shell with cells up to the mouth. The last whorl left vacant by the Anthidium is a magnificent lodging which nothing prevents the mason from occupying. The Osmia does seize upon it, in fact, and does so too often for the welfare of the unfortunate late-comer. The fi

eir shells until the following spring, completely block the way. To force a passage from the far-end of those catacombs is beyond the strength of the Resin-bee, already weakened by the effort of breaking out of her own nest. A few of the Osmia's partitions are damaged, a few cocoons receive slight injuries; and th

slightest favourable occurrence in the course of animal industry as the starting-point of an improvement which, transmitted by heredity and becoming in time more and more accentuated, at last grows into a settled characteristic common to the whole race. There is, it is true, a total absence of positive

,' said Rabelais, 'the l

tays up; and the l

ay,' says our friend, 'instinct may have

te sure that things

e brutal fact, the only thing that can be trusted; I record it and then ask myself what conclusion r

nd on went the hereditary liking; and the Snail-shell proved more and more agreeable to the insect's descendants, who began to look for it under the stones, so that later generations, with the aid of habit, ended by adopting it as the ancestral dwelling. Again by accident, the Bee happened upon a drop of resin. It was soft, plastic, well-suited for the partitioning of the Snail-shell; it soon hardened into a solid ceiling. The Bee tried the resi

share of good and its share of evil. Avoiding the latter and seeking the former is the rough balance-sheet of life's actions. Animals, like ourselv

vites le bonh

ssed is good

lively memory, a powerful impression of their desperate struggle through the mass of earth; they must have inspired their descendants with a dread of those vast dwellings where the stranger comes afterwards and builds; they must have taught them by habit the means of safety, the use of the medium-sized shell, which the nest fills to the mouth. So

t all: the Resin-bee persists in using big Snail-shells just as though her ancestors had never known the danger of the Osmia-blocked vestibule. Once these facts are duly recognized, the conclusion is irresistible: it is obvious that, as the insect does not hand down the casual modification tending to

seeing them; for they lead extremely solitary and wary lives. A warm nook under some stone or other; the deserted streets of an Ant-hill in a sun-baked bank; a Beetle's vacant burrow a few inches below the ground; in short, a cavity of some sort, perhaps arranged by the Bee's own care: these are the only establis

nail-shell, she gathers any hard granule near at hand capable of strengthening her work; and the dried skulls of Ants, which are frequent around about her abode, are in her eyes building-stones of equal value to the pebbles. One and all employ whatever they can find without much seeking. The inhabitant of the shell, in order to construct her barricade, makes shift with the dry excrem

ne-in short, all the distinguishing characteristics of resin. Here then are two more collectors of the exudations of the Coniferae. At the points where I find their nests are Aleppo pines, cypresses, brown-berried junipers and common junipers. Which of the four supplies the mastic? There is nothing to tell us. Nor is there anything to explain how the native a

her pitch on the dead pine as copiously as the Mason-bee collects her mortar on the macadamized road. Her workshop no longer shows us the niggardly partitioning of a Snail-shell with two or three drops of resin; what we see is the whole building of the house, from the basement to the roof, from the thick outer walls to the partitions of the rooms. The cement expended woul

his variety of manufactures. I confine myself to the little that I know and ask myself in what the manipulator of cotton differs from the manipulator of resin as regards tools, that is to say, organs. Certainly, when the genus Anthidium was set down by the classifiers, they were not wanting in scientific precision: they consulted, under the lens of the microscope, the wings, the mandibles, the legs, the harvesting-brush, in short, all the d

my mind by the contradictory nature of my discoveries, thinks that he has found the solution of the diffi

the plants. It is a sort of comb or teasel. The resin-kneading females have the edge of the mandible not toothed, but simply curved; the tip alone, preceded by a notch which is pretty clearly marked

he resin. I should have left it at that and felt quite content without further investigation, if I had not had the curiosity to open my boxes and, in my t

; and no indentations, none whatsoever. A splendid tool, as you say, for gathering the viscous pellet; quite as efficacious in its kind of work as is the rake of the toot

en of Resin-bees; she, who collects a lump of mastic the size of one's fist, enough to subdivide hundreds of her kinswomen's Snail-shells: well, she, by way of a spoon, carries a rake! On the wide edges of her mandibles stand four teeth, as long and pointed as those of the most zealous cotton-gleaner. A. florentinum, that mighty manufa

hort, out of four Resin-bees, the only four that I know, one is armed with a spoon, if this expression be really suited to the tool's function; the three others are armed with a rake; and it so h

is, SAUSS. She builds a very pretty nest with resin and gravel in the shells of the young Common Snail, of Helix nemoralis and sometimes of Bulimulus radiatus. I will describe her masterpiece on some other occasion. To one acquainted with the genus Odynerus, any comparison with the Anthidia would be an inexcusable error. In larval diet, in shape, in habits, they form two dissimilar groups, very far removed one from the other. The Anthidia feed their offspring on honey-bread; the Odyneri feed it on live prey. Well, with her slender form, her weakly frame, in which the most clear-seeing eye would seek

t; the Pelopaeus-wasps fashion clay pots; the Megachiles made disks cut from leaves into urns; the Anthidia felt cotton into purses; the Resin-bees cement together little bits of gravel with gum; the Carpenter-be

ently equipped for gathering and felting cotton is ill-equipped for cutting lea

iosity. They save us much long and often irksome study; they impart a veneer of general knowledge. There is nothing that achieves such immediate success as an explanation of the riddle of the universe in a word or two. The thinker does not travel so fast: content to know little so that he may know something, he limits his field

nstances where the plane takes the place of the saw, or the saw of the plane; its dexterity makes good the inadequacy of the implement. To go no further, have we not just seen different artisans collecting and using pitch, some with spoons, others with

hest merit, a Latreille (Pierre Andre Latreille (1762-1833), one of the founders of modern entomological science.-Translator's Note.), for instance, versed in all the details of the structure of insects but utterly unacquainted with their habits. He k

form us that it collects honey and pollen; but its special art will remain an utter secret, notwithstanding all the scrutiny of the microscope. In our own industries, the plane denotes the joiner, the trowel the mason, the scissors the tailor, the needle the seamstress. Are

that one bores wood; th

ifying the trad

r causes besides the possession of tools? Certainly, each of those specialists requires implements; but they are rough and ready implements, good for all sorts of purposes, like the tool of Franklin's workman. The same notched mandible that reaps cot

l instead of being subordinate to it. The instrument does not determine the manner of industry; the tool does not make the workman. At the beginning there is an object, a plan, in view of which the animal ac

which I possess; what I do is to use the implement, s

us, in it

ined the organ; vision i

ts to us Virgil's

molem'; 'Mind