THE MASON-BEES

By J. Henri Fabre

Translated By Alexander Teixeira De Mattos

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 

This volume contains all the essays on the Chalicodomae, or Mason-beesproper, which so greatly enhance the interest of the early volumes ofthe "Souvenirs entomologiques. " I have also included an essay on theauthor's Cats and one on Red Ants--the only study of Ants comprisedin the "Souvenirs"--both of which bear upon the sense of directionpossessed by the Bees. Those treating of the Osmiae, who are alsoMason-Bees, although not usually known by that name, will be found ina separate volume, which I have called "Bramble-bees and Others" andin which I have collected all that Fabre has written on such other WildBees as the Megachiles, or Leaf-cutters, the Cotton-bees, the Resin-beesand the Halicti. 

The essays entitled "The Mason-bees, Experiments" and "Exchanging theNests" form the last three chapters of "Insect Life", translated by theauthor of "Mademoiselle Mori" and published by Messrs. Macmillan, who, with the greatest courtesy and kindness have given me their permissionto include a new translation of these chapters in the present volume. They did so without fee or consideration of any kind, merely on myrepresentation that it would be a great pity if this uniform editionof Fabre's Works should be rendered incomplete because certain essaysformed part of volumes of extracts previously published in this country. Their generosity is almost unparalleled in my experience; and I wishto thank them publicly for it in the name of the author, of the Frenchpublishers and of the English and American publishers, as well as in myown. 

Some of the chapters have appeared in England in the "Daily Mail", the"Fortnightly Review" and the "English Review"; some in America in "GoodHousekeeping" and the "Youth's Companion"; others now see the light inEnglish for the first time. 

I have again to thank Miss Frances Rodwell for the invaluable assistancewhich she has given me in the work of translation and in the lessinteresting and more tedious department of research. 

ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS. 

Chelsea, 1914. 

CONTENTS. 

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 

CHAPTER 1. THE MASON-BEES. 

CHAPTER 2. EXPERIMENTS. 

CHAPTER 3. EXCHANGING THE NESTS. 

CHAPTER 4. MORE ENQUIRIES INTO MASON-BEES. 

CHAPTER 5. THE STORY OF MY CATS. 

CHAPTER 6. THE RED ANTS. 

CHAPTER 7. SOME REFLECTIONS UPON INSECT PSYCHOLOGY. 

CHAPTER 8. PARASITES. 

CHAPTER 9. THE THEORY OF PARASITISM. 

CHAPTER 10. THE TRIBULATIONS OF THE MASON-BEE. 

CHAPTER 11. THE LEUCOPSES. 

INDEX. 

CHAPTER 1. THE MASON-BEES. 

Reaumur (Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757), inventor of theReaumur thermometer and author of "Memoires pour servir a l'histoirenaturelle des insectes. "--Translator's Note. ) devoted one of hispapers to the story of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, whom he callsthe Mason-bee. I propose to go on with the story, to complete it andespecially to consider it from a point of view wholly neglected by thateminent observer. And, first of all, I am tempted to tell how I madethis Bee's acquaintance. 

It was when I first began to teach, about 1843. I had left the normalschool at Vaucluse some months before, with my diploma and all thesimple enthusiasm of my eighteen years, and had been sent to Carpentras, there to manage the primary school attached to the college. It wasa strange school, upon my word, notwithstanding its pompous title of'upper'; a sort of huge cellar oozing with the perpetual damp engenderedby a well backing on it in the street outside. For light there was theopen door, when the weather permitted, and a narrow prison-window, withiron bars and lozenge panes set in lead. By way of benches there was aplank fastened to the wall all round the room, while in the middle was achair bereft of its straw, a black-board and a stick of chalk. 

Morning and evening, at the sound of the bell, there came rushing insome fifty young imps who, having shown themselves hopeless dunces withtheir Cornelius Nepos, had been relegated, in the phrase of the day, to 'a few good years of French. ' Those who had found mensa too much forthem came to me to get a smattering of grammar. Children and strappinglads were there, mixed up together, at very different educationalstages, but all incorrigibly agreed to play tricks upon the master, theboy master who was no older than some of them, or even younger. 

To the little ones I gave their first lessons in reading; theintermediate ones I showed how they should hold their pen to write afew lines of dictation on their knees; to the big ones I revealed thesecrets of fractions and even the mysteries of Euclid. And to keep thisrestless crowd in order, to give each mind work in accordance with itsstrength, to keep attention aroused and lastly to expel dullness fromthe gloomy room, whose walls dripped melancholy even more than dampness, my one resource was my tongue, my one weapon my stick of chalk. 

For that matter, there was the same contempt in the other classes forall that was not Latin or Greek. One instance will be enough to showhow things then stood with the teaching of physics, the science whichoccupies so large a place to-day. The principal of the college was afirst-rate man, the worthy Abbe X. , who, not caring to dispense beansand bacon himself, had left the commissariat-department to a relativeand had undertaken to teach the boys physics. 

Let us attend one of his lessons. The subject is the barometer. Theestablishment happens to possess one, an old apparatus, covered withdust, hanging on the wall beyond the reach of profane hands and bearingon its face, in large letters, the words stormy, rain, fair. 

'The barometer, ' says the good abbe, addressing his pupils, whom, inpatriarchal fashion, he calls by their Christian names, 'the barometertells us if the weather will be good or bad. You see the words writtenon the face--stormy, rain--do you see, Bastien?'

'Yes, I see, ' says Bastien, the most mischievous of the lot. 

He has been looking through his book and knows more about the barometerthan his teacher does. 

'It consists, ' the abbe continues, 'of a bent glass tube filled withmercury, which rises and falls according to the weather. The shorterleg of this tube is open; the other. . . The other. . . Well, we'll see. Here, Bastien, you're the tallest, get up on the chair and just feel with yourfinger if the long leg is open or closed. I can't remember for certain. '

Bastien climbs on the chair, stands as high as he can on tip-toe andfumbles with his finger at the top of the long column. Then, with adiscreet smile spreading under the silky hairs of his dawning moustache:

'Yes, ' he says, 'that's it. The long leg is open at the top. There, Ican feel the hole. '

And Bastien, to confirm his mendacious statement, keeps wrigglinghis forefinger at the top of the tube, while his fellow-conspiratorssuppress their enjoyment as best they can. 

'That will do, ' says the unconscious abbe. 'You can get down, Bastien. Take a note of it, boys: the longer leg of the barometer is open; take anote of it. It's a thing you might forget; I had forgotten it myself. '

Thus was physics taught. Things improved, however: a master came andcame to stay, one who knew that the long leg of the barometer is closed. I myself secured tables on which my pupils were able to write insteadof scribbling on their knees; and, as my class was daily increasingin numbers, it ended by being divided into two. As soon as I had anassistant to look after the younger boys, things assumed a differentaspect. 

Among the subjects taught, one in particular appealed to both mastersand pupils. This was open-air geometry, practical surveying. The collegehad none of the necessary outfit; but, with my fat pay--seven hundredfrancs a year, if you please!--I could not hesitate over the expense. A surveyor's chain and stakes, arrows, level, square and compass werebought with my money. A microscopic graphometer, not much larger thanthe palm of one's hand and costing perhaps five francs, was providedby the establishment. There was no tripod to it; and I had one made. Inshort, my equipment was complete. 

And so, when May came, once every week we left the gloomy school-roomfor the fields. It was a regular holiday. The boys disputed for thehonour of carrying the stakes, divided into bundles of three; and morethan one shoulder, as we walked through the town, felt the reflectedglory of those erudite rods. I myself--why conceal the fact?--was notwithout a certain satisfaction as I piously carried that most delicateand precious apparatus, the historic five-franc graphometer. The sceneof operations was an untilled, flinty plain, a harmas, as we call it inthe district. (Cf. "The Life of the Fly", by J. Henri Fabre, translatedby Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1. --Translator's Note. ) Here, no curtain of green hedges or shrubs prevented me from keeping aneye upon my staff; here--an indispensable condition--I had not theirresistible temptation of the unripe apricots to fear for my scholars. The plain stretched far and wide, covered with nothing but floweringthyme and rounded pebbles. There was ample scope for every imaginablepolygon; trapezes and triangles could be combined in all sorts of ways. The inaccessible distances had ample elbow-room; and there was evenan old ruin, once a pigeon-house, that lent its perpendicular to thegraphometer's performances. 

Well, from the very first day, my attention was attracted by somethingsuspicious. If I sent one of the boys to plant a stake, I would see himstop frequently on his way, bend down, stand up again, look about andstoop once more, neglecting his straight line and his signals. Another, who was told to pick up the arrows, would forget the iron pin and takeup a pebble instead; and a third deaf to the measurements of angles, would crumble a clod of earth between his fingers. Most of them werecaught licking a bit of straw. The polygon came to a full stop, thediagonals suffered. What could the mystery be?

I enquired; and everything was explained. A born searcher and observer, the scholar had long known what the master had not yet heard of, namely, that there was a big black Bee who made clay nests on the pebbles in theharmas. These nests contained honey; and my surveyors used to openthem and empty the cells with a straw. The honey, although ratherstrong-flavoured, was most acceptable. I acquired a taste for it myselfand joined the nest-hunters, putting off the polygon till later. Itwas thus that I first saw Reaumur's Mason-bee, knowing nothing of herhistory and nothing of her historian. 

The magnificent Bee herself, with her dark-violet wings and black-velvetraiment, her rustic edifices on the sun-blistered pebbles amid thethyme, her honey, providing a diversion from the severities of thecompass and the square, all made a great impression on my mind; and Iwanted to know more than I had learnt from the schoolboys, which wasjust how to rob the cells of their honey with a straw. As it happened, my bookseller had a gorgeous work on insects for sale. It was called"Histoire naturelle des animaux articules", by de Castelnau (FrancisComte de Castelnau de la Porte (1812-1880), the naturalistand traveller. Castelnau was born in London and died atMelbourne. --Translator's Note. ), E. Blanchard (Emile Blanchard (born1820), author of various works on insects, Spiders, etc. --Translator'sNote. ) and Lucas (Pierre Hippolyte Lucas (born 1815), author of workson Moths and Butterflies, Crustaceans, etc. --Translator's Note. ), andboasted a multitude of most attractive illustrations; but the price ofit, the price of it! No matter: was not my splendid income supposedto cover everything, food for the mind as well as food for the body?Anything extra that I gave to the one I could save upon the other; amethod of balancing painfully familiar to those who look to science fortheir livelihood. The purchase was effected. That day my professionalemoluments were severely strained: I devoted a month's salary to theacquisition of the book. I had to resort to miracles of economy for sometime to come before making up the enormous deficit. 

The book was devoured; there is no other word for it. In it, I learntthe name of my black Bee; I read for the first time various details ofthe habits of insects; I found, surrounded in my eyes with a sort ofhalo, the revered names of Reaumur, Huber (Francois Huber (1750-1831), the Swiss naturalist, author of "Nouvelles observations sur lesabeilles. " He early became blind from excessive study and conductedhis scientific work thereafter with the aid of his wife. --Translator'sNote. ) and Leon Dufour (Jean Marie Leon Dufour (1780-1865), anarmy surgeon who served with distinction in several campaigns, andsubsequently practised as a doctor in the Landes, where he attainedgreat eminence as a naturalist. Fabre often refers to him as theWizard of the Landes. Cf. "The Life of the Spider", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1; and "The Life ofthe Fly": chapter 1. --Translator's Note. ); and, while I turned over thepages for the hundredth time, a voice within me seemed to whisper:

'You also shall be of their company!'

Ah, fond illusions, what has come of you? (The present essay is one ofthe earliest in the "Souvenirs Entomologiques. "--Translator's Note. )

But let us banish these recollections, at once sweet and sad, and speakof the doings of our black Bee. Chalicodoma, meaning a house of pebbles, concrete or mortar, would be a most satisfactory title, were it not thatit has an odd sound to any one unfamiliar with Greek. The name is givento Bees who build their cells with materials similar to those which weemploy for our own dwellings. The work of these insects is masonry; onlyit is turned out by a rustic mason more used to hard clay than to hewnstone. Reaumur, who knew nothing of scientific classification--a factwhich makes many of his papers very difficult to understand--named theworker after her work and called our builders in dried clay Mason-bees, which describes them exactly. 

We have two of them in our district: the Chalicodoma of the Walls(Chalicodoma muraria), whose history Reaumur gives us in a masterlyfashion; and the Sicilian Chalicodoma (C. Sicula) (For reasons that willbecome apparent after the reader has learnt their habits, the authoralso speaks of the Mason-bee of the Walls and the Sicilian Mason-beeas the Mason-bee of the Pebbles and the Mason-bee of the Shedsrespectively. Cf. Chapter 4 footnote. --Translator's Note. ), who is notpeculiar to the land of Etna, as her name might suggest, but is alsofound in Greece, in Algeria and in the south of France, particularly inthe department of Vaucluse, where she is one of the commonest Bees tobe seen in the month of May. In the first species the two sexes are sounlike in colouring that a novice, surprised at observing them come outof the same nest, would at first take them for strangers to each other. The female is of a splendid velvety black, with dark-violet wings. Inthe male, the black velvet is replaced by a rather bright brick-redfleece. The second species, which is much smaller, does not show thiscontrast of colour: the two sexes wear the same costume, a generalmixture of brown, red and grey, while the tips of the wings, washed withviolet on a bronzed ground, recall, but only faintly, the rich purple ofthe first species. Both begin their labours at the same period, in theearly part of May. 

As Reaumur tells us, the Chalicodoma of the Walls in the northernprovinces selects a wall directly facing the sun and one not coveredwith plaster, which might come off and imperil the future of the cells. She confides her buildings only to solid foundations, such as barestones. I find her equally prudent in the south; but, for some reasonwhich I do not know, she here generally prefers some other base to thestone of a wall. A rounded pebble, often hardly larger than one's fist, one of those cobbles with which the waters of the glacial period coveredthe terraces of the Rhone Valley, forms the most popular support. The extreme abundance of these sites might easily influence the Bee'schoice: all our less elevated uplands, all our arid, thyme-clad groundsare nothing but water-worn stones cemented with red earth. In thevalleys, the Chalicodoma has also the pebbles of the mountain-streamsat her disposal. Near Orange, for instance, her favourite spots are thealluvia of the Aygues, with their carpets of smooth pebbles no longervisited by the waters. Lastly, if a cobble be wanting, the Mason-beewill establish her nest on any sort of stone, on a mile-stone or aboundary-wall. 

The Sicilian Chalicodoma has an even greater variety of choice. Her mostcherished site is the lower surface of the projecting tiles of a roof. There is not a cottage in the fields, however small, but sheltersher nests under the eaves. Here, each spring, she settles in populouscolonies, whose masonry, handed down from one generation to the next andenlarged year by year, ends by covering considerable surfaces. I haveseen some of these nests, under the tiles of a shed, spreading over anarea of five or six square yards. When the colony was hard at work, thebusy, buzzing crowd was enough to make one giddy. The under side of abalcony also pleases the Mason-bee, as does the embrasure of a disusedwindow, especially if it is closed by a blind whose slats allow hera free passage. But these are popular resorts, where hundreds andthousands of workers labour, each for herself. If she be alone, whichhappens pretty often, the Sicilian Mason-bee instals herself in thefirst little nook handy, provided that it supplies a solid foundationand warmth. As for the nature of this foundation, she does not seem tomind. I have seen her build on the bare stone, on bricks, on the woodof a shutter and even on the window-panes of a shed. One thing onlydoes not suit her: the plaster of our houses. She is as prudent as herkinswoman and would fear the ruin of her cells, if she entrusted them toa support which might possibly fall. 

Lastly, for reasons which I am still unable to explain to my ownsatisfaction, the Sicilian Mason-bee often changes the position of herbuilding entirely, turning her heavy house of clay, which would seemto require the solid support of a rock, into an aerial dwelling. Ahedge-shrub of any kind whatever--hawthorn, pomegranate, Christ'sthorn--provides her with a foundation, usually as high as a man's head. The holm-oak and the elm give her a greater altitude. She chooses in thebushy clump a twig no thicker than a straw; and on this narrow base sheconstructs her edifice with the same mortar that she would employ undera balcony or the ledge of a roof. When finished, the nest is a ball ofearth, bisected by the twig. It is the size of an apricot when the workof a single insect and of one's fist if several have collaborated; butthis latter case is rare. 

Both Bees use the same materials: calcareous clay, mingled with a littlesand and kneaded into a paste with the mason's own saliva. Damp places, which would facilitate the quarrying and reduce the expenditure ofsaliva for mixing the mortar, are scorned by the Mason-bees, who refusefresh earth for building even as our own builders refuse plaster andlime that have long lost their setting-properties. These materials, whensoaked with pure moisture, would not hold properly. What is wanted is adry dust, which greedily absorbs the disgorged saliva and forms with thelatter's albuminous elements a sort of readily-hardening Roman cement, something in short resembling the cement which we obtain with quicklimeand white of egg. 

The mortar-quarry which the Sicilian Mason-bee prefers to work is afrequented highway, whose metal of chalky flints, crushed by the passingwheels, has become a smooth surface, like a continuous flagstone. Whether settling on a twig in a hedge or fixing her abode under theeaves of some rural dwelling, she always goes for her building-materialsto the nearest path or road, without allowing herself to be distractedfrom her business by the constant traffic of people and cattle. Youshould see the active Bee at work when the road is dazzling whiteunder the rays of a hot sun. Between the adjoining farm, which is thebuilding-yard, and the road, in which the mortar is prepared, we hearthe deep hum of the Bees perpetually crossing one another as they goto and fro. The air seems traversed by incessant trails of smoke, sostraight and rapid is the worker's flight. Those on the way to the nestcarry tiny pellets of mortar, the size of small shot; those who returnat once settle on the driest and hardest spots. Their whole bodyaquiver, they scrape with the tips of their mandibles and rake withtheir front tarsi to extract atoms of earth and grains of sand, which, rolled between their teeth, become impregnated with saliva and forma solid mass. The work is pursued so vigorously that the worker letsherself be crushed under the feet of the passers-by rather than abandonher task. 

On the other hand, the Mason-bee of the Walls, who seeks solitude, far from human habitations, rarely shows herself on the beaten paths, perhaps because these are too far from the places where she builds. Solong as she can find dry earth, rich in small gravel, near the pebblechosen as the site of her nest, that is all she asks. 

The Bee may either build an entirely new nest on a site as yetunoccupied, or she may use the cells of an old nest, after repairingthem. Let us consider the former case first. After selecting her pebble, the Mason-bee of the Walls arrives with a little ball of mortar in hermandibles and lays it in a circular pad on the surface of the stone. The fore-legs and above all the mandibles, which are the mason's chieftools, work the material, which is kept plastic by the salivary fluid asthis is gradually disgorged. In order to consolidate the clay, angularbits of gravel, the size of a lentil, are inserted separately, but onlyon the outside, in the as yet soft mass. This is the foundation of thestructure. Fresh layers follow, until the cell has attained the desiredheight of two or three centimetres. (Three-quarters of an inch to oneinch. --Translator's Note. )

Man's masonry is formed of stones laid one above the other and cementedtogether with lime. The Chalicodoma's work can bear comparison withours. To economise labour and mortar, the Bee employs coarse materials, big pieces of gravel, which to her represent hewn stones. She choosesthem carefully one by one, picks out the hardest bits, generally withcorners which, fitting one into the other, give mutual support andcontribute to the solidity of the whole. Layers of mortar, sparinglyapplied, hold them together. The outside of the cell thus assumesthe appearance of a piece of rustic architecture, in which the stonesproject with their natural irregularities; but the inside, whichrequires a more even surface in order not to hurt the larva's tenderskin, is covered with a coat of pure mortar. This inner whitewash, however, is put on without any attempt at art, indeed one might saythat it is ladled on in great splashes; and the grub takes care, afterfinishing its mess of honey, to make itself a cocoon and hang the rudewalls of its abode with silk. On the other hand, the Anthophorae andthe Halicti, two species of Wild Bees whose grubs weave no cocoon, delicately glaze the inside of their earthen cells and give them thegloss of polished ivory. 

The structure, whose axis is nearly always vertical and whose orificefaces upwards so as not to let the honey escape, varies a littlein shape according to the supporting base. When set on a horizontalsurface, it rises like a little oval tower; when fixed against anupright or slanting surface, it resembles the half of a thimble dividedfrom top to bottom. In this case, the support itself, the pebble, completes the outer wall. 

When the cell is finished, the Bee at once sets to work to victual it. The flowers round about, especially those of the yellow broom (Genistascoparia), which in May deck the pebbly borders of the mountain streamswith gold, supply her with sugary liquid and pollen. She comes with hercrop swollen with honey and her belly yellowed underneath with pollendust. She dives head first into the cell; and for a few moments you seesome spasmodic jerks which show that she is disgorging the honey-syrup. After emptying her crop, she comes out of the cell, only to go in againat once, but this time backwards. The Bee now brushes the lower sideof her abdomen with her two hind-legs and rids herself of her load ofpollen. Once more she comes out and once more goes in head first. It isa question of stirring the materials, with her mandibles for a spoon, and making the whole into a homogeneous mixture. This mixing-operationis not repeated after every journey: it takes place only at longintervals, when a considerable quantity of material has beenaccumulated. 

The victualling is complete when the cell is half full. An egg must nowbe laid on the top of the paste and the house must be closed. All thisis done without delay. The cover consists of a lid of pure mortar, whichthe Bee builds by degrees, working from the circumference to the centre. Two days at most appeared to me to be enough for everything, providedthat no bad weather--rain or merely clouds--came to interruptthe labour. Then a second cell is built, backing on the first andprovisioned in the same manner. A third, a fourth, and so on follow, each supplied with honey and an egg and closed before the foundationsof the next are laid. Each task begun is continued until it is quitefinished; the Bee never commences a new cell until the four processesneeded for the construction of its predecessor are completed: thebuilding, the victualling, the laying of the egg and the closing of thecell. 

As the Mason-bee of the Walls always works by herself on the pebblewhich she has chosen and even shows herself very jealous of her sitewhen her neighbours alight upon it, the number of cells set back to backupon one pebble is not large, usually varying between six and ten. Do some eight grubs represent the Bee's whole family? Or does sheafterwards go and establish a more numerous progeny on other boulders?The surface of the same stone is spacious enough to provide a supportfor further cells if the number of eggs called for them; the Bee couldbuild there very comfortably, without hunting for another site, without leaving the pebble to which she is attached by habit and longacquaintance. It seems to me therefore, exceedingly probable that thefamily is a small one and that it is all installed on the one stone, atany rate when the Mason-bee is building a new home. 

The six to ten cells composing the cluster are certainly a soliddwelling, with their rustic gravel covering; but the thickness of theirwalls and lids, two millimetres (. 078 inch--Translator's Note. ) at most, seems hardly sufficient to protect the grubs against the inclemenciesof the weather. Set on its pebble in the open air, without any sort ofshelter, the nest will have to undergo the heat of summer, which willturn each cell into a stifling furnace, followed by the autumn rains, which will slowly wear away the stonework, and by the winter frosts, which will crumble what the rains have respected. However hard thecement may be, can it possibly resist all these agents of destruction?And, even if it does resist, will not the grubs, sheltered by too thina wall, have to suffer from excess of heat in summer and of cold inwinter?

Without arguing all this out, the Bee nevertheless acts wisely. When allthe cells are finished, she builds a thick cover over the group, formedof a material, impermeable to water and a bad conductor of heat, whichacts as a protection at the same time against damp, heat and cold. Thismaterial is the usual mortar, made of earth mixed with saliva, but onthis occasion with no small stones in it. The Bee applies it pelletby pellet, trowelful by trowelful, to the depth of a centimetre (. 39inch--Translator's Note. ) over the cluster of cells, which disappearentirely under the clay covering. When this is done, the nest has theshape of a rough dome, equal in size to half an orange. One wouldtake it for a round lump of mud which had been thrown and half crushedagainst a stone and had then dried where it was. Nothing outside betraysthe contents, no semblance of cells, no semblance of work. To theinexperienced eye, it is a chance splash of mud and nothing more. 

This outer covering dries as quickly as do our hydraulic cements; andthe nest is now almost as hard as a stone. It takes a knife with astrong blade to break open the edifice. And I would add, in conclusion, that, under its final form, the nest in no way recalls the originalwork, so much so that one would imagine the cells of the start, thoseelegant turrets covered with stucco-work, and the dome of the finish, looking like a mere lump of mud, to be the product of two differentspecies. But scrape away the crust of cement and we shall easilyrecognize the cells below and their layers of tiny pebbles. 

Instead of building a brand-new nest, on a hitherto unoccupied boulder, the Mason-bee of the Walls is always glad to make use of the old nestswhich have lasted through the year without suffering any damage worthmentioning. The mortar dome has remained very much what it was at thebeginning, thanks to the solidity of the masonry, only it is perforatedwith a number of round holes, corresponding with the chambers, the cellsinhabited by past generations of larvae. Dwellings such as these, whichneed only a little repair to put them in good condition, save a greatdeal of time and trouble; and the Mason-bees look out for them and donot decide to build new nests except when the old ones are wanting. 

From one and the same dome there issue several inhabitants, brothers andsisters, ruddy males and black females, all the offspring of the sameBee. The males lead a careless existence, know nothing of work anddo not return to the clay houses except for a brief moment to woo theladies; nor do they reck of the deserted cabin. What they want is thenectar in the flower-cups, not mortar to mix between their mandibles. There remain the young mothers, who alone are charged with the futureof the family. To which of them will the inheritance of the old nestrevert? As sisters, they have equal rights to it: so our code woulddecide, since the day when it shook itself free of the old savageright of primogeniture. But the Mason-bees have not yet got beyond theprimitive basis of property, the right of the first occupant. 

When, therefore, the laying-time is at hand, the Bee takes possession ofthe first vacant nest that suits her and settles there; and woe to anysister or neighbour who shall henceforth dare to contest her ownership. Hot pursuits and fierce blows will soon put the newcomer to flight. Ofthe various cells that yawn like so many wells around the dome, only oneis needed at the moment; but the Bee rightly calculates that the otherswill be useful presently for the other eggs; and she watches them allwith jealous vigilance to drive away possible visitors. Indeed I do notremember ever seeing two Masons working on the same pebble. 

The task is now very simple. The Bee examines the old cell to see whatparts require repairing. She tears off the strips of cocoon hanging fromthe walls, removes the fragments of clay that fell from the ceiling whenpierced by the last inhabitant to make her exit, gives a coat of mortarto the dilapidated parts, mends the opening a little; and that is all. Next come the storing, the laying of the eggs and the closing of thechamber. When all the cells, one after the other, are thus furnished, the outer cover, the mortar dome, receives a few repairs if it needsthem; and the thing is done. 

The Sicilian Mason-bee prefers company to a solitary life andestablishes herself in her hundreds, very often in many thousands, underthe tiles of a shed or the edge of a roof. These do not constitute atrue society, with common interests to which all attend, but a meregathering, where each works for herself and is not concerned with therest, in short, a throng of workers recalling the swarm of a hive onlyby their numbers and their eagerness. The mortar employed is the same asthat of the Mason-bee of the Walls, equally unyielding and waterproof, but thinner and without pebbles. The old nests are used first. Everyfree chamber is repaired, stocked and sealed up. But the old cells arefar from sufficient for the population, which increases rapidly fromyear to year. Then, on the surface of the nest, whose chambers arehidden under the old general mortar covering, new cells are built, as the needs of the laying-time call for them. They are placedhorizontally, or nearly so, side by side, with no attempt at orderlyarrangement. Each architect has plenty of elbow-room and builds as andwhere she pleases, on the one condition that she does not hamper herneighbours' work; otherwise she can look out for rough handling from theparties interested. The cells, therefore, accumulate at random inthis workyard where there is no organization. Their shape is that of athimble divided down the middle; and their walls are completed either bythe adjoining cells or by the surface of the old nest. Outside, they arerough and display successive layers of knotted cords corresponding withthe different courses of mortar. Inside, the walls are flat withoutbeing smooth; later on, the grub's cocoon will make up for any lack ofpolish. 

Each cell, as built, is stocked and walled up immediately, as we haveseen with the Mason-bee of the Walls. This work goes on throughout thebest part of May. All the eggs are laid at last; and then the Bees, without drawing distinctions between what does and what does not belongto them, set to work in common on a general protection for the colony. This is a thick coat of mortar, which fills up the gaps and covers allthe cells. In the end, the common nest presents the appearance of a wideexpanse of dry mud, with very irregular protuberances, thicker in themiddle, the original nucleus of the establishment, thinner at the edges, where as yet there are only newly built cells, and varying greatly indimensions according to the number of workers and therefore to the ageof the nest first founded. Some of these nests are hardly larger thanone's hand, while others occupy the greater part of the projecting edgeof a roof and are measured by square yards. 

When working alone, which is not unusual, on the shutter of a disusedwindow, on a stone, or on a twig in some hedge, the Sicilian Chalicodomabehaves in just the same way. For instance, should she settle on a twig, the Bee begins by solidly cementing the base of her cell to the slightfoundation. Next, the building rises, taking the form of a littleupright turret. This first cell, when victualled and sealed, is followedby another, having as its support, in addition to the twig, the cellsalready built. From six to ten chambers are thus grouped side by side. Lastly, one coat of mortar covers everything, including the twig itself, which provides a firm mainstay for the whole. 

CHAPTER 2. EXPERIMENTS. 

As the nests of the Mason-bee of the Walls are erected on small-sizedpebbles, which can be easily carried wherever you like and moved aboutfrom one place to another, without disturbing either the work ofthe builder or the repose of the occupants of the cells, they lendthemselves readily to practical experiment, the only method that canthrow a little light on the nature of instinct. To study the insect'smental faculties to any purpose, it is not enough for the observer to beable to profit by some happy combination of circumstances: he must knowhow to produce other combinations, vary them as much as possible andtest them by substitution and interchange. Lastly, to provide sciencewith a solid basis of facts, he must experiment. In this way, theevidence of formal records will one day dispel the fantastic legendswith which our books are crowded: the Sacred Beetle (A Dung-beetle whorolls the manure of cattle into balls for his own consumption and thatof his young. Cf. "Insect Life", by J. H. Fabre, translated by the authorof "Mademoiselle Mori": chapters 1 and 2; and "The Life and Love of theInsect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos:chapters 1 to 4. --Translator's Note. ) calling on his comrades to lend ahelping hand in dragging his pellet out of a rut; the Sphex (A speciesof Hunting Wasp. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 6 to 12. --Translator'sNote. ) cutting up her Fly so as to be able to carry him despitethe obstacle of the wind; and all the other fallacies which are thestock-in-trade of those who wish to see in the animal world what is notreally there. In this way, again, materials will be prepared whichwill one day be worked up by the hand of a master and consign hasty andunfounded theories to oblivion. 

Reaumur, as a rule, confines himself to stating facts as he sees themin the normal course of events and does not try to probe deeper into theinsect's ingenuity by means of artificially produced conditions. In histime, everything had yet to be done; and the harvest was so great thatthe illustrious harvester went straight to what was most urgent, thegathering of the crop, and left his successors to examine the grain andthe ear in detail. Nevertheless, in connection with the Chalicodoma ofthe Walls, he mentions an experiment made by his friend, Duhamel. (HenriLouis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1781), a distinguished writer on botanyand agriculture. --Translator's Note. ) He tells us how a Mason-bee's nestwas enclosed in a glass funnel, the mouth of which was covered merelywith a bit of gauze. From it there issued three males, who, aftervanquishing mortar as hard as stone, either never thought of piercingthe flimsy gauze or else deemed the work beyond their strength. Thethree Bees died under the funnel. Reaumur adds that insects generallyknow only how to do what they have to do in the ordinary course ofnature. 

The experiment does not satisfy me, for two reasons: first, to askworkers equipped with tools for cutting clay as hard as granite to cuta piece of gauze does not strike me as a happy inspiration; youcannot expect a navvy's pick-axe to do the same work as a dressmaker'sscissors. Secondly, the transparent glass prison seems to me ill-chosen. As soon as the insect has made a passage through the thickness of itsearthen dome, it finds itself in broad daylight; and to it daylightmeans the final deliverance, means liberty. It strikes against aninvisible obstacle, the glass; and to it glass is nothing at all and yetan obstruction. On the far side, it sees free space, bathed in sunshine. It wears itself out in efforts to fly there, unable to understand thefutile nature of its attempts against that strange barrier whichit cannot see. It perishes, at last, of exhaustion, without, in itsobstinacy, giving a glance at the gauze closing the conical chimney. Theexperiment must be renewed under better conditions. 

The obstacle which I select is ordinary brown paper, stout enoughto keep the insect in the dark and thin enough not to offer seriousresistance to the prisoner's efforts. As there is a great difference, inso far as the actual nature of the barrier is concerned, between a paperpartition and a clay ceiling, let us begin by enquiring if the Mason-beeof the Walls knows how or rather is able to make her way through oneof these partitions. The mandibles are pickaxes suitable for breakingthrough hard mortar: are they also scissors capable of cutting a thinmembrane? This is the point to look into first of all. 

In February, by which time the insect is in its perfect state, I take acertain number of cocoons, without damaging them, from their cells andinsert them each in a separate stump of reed, closed at one end by thenatural wall of the node and open at the other. These pieces of reedrepresent the cells of the nest. The cocoons are introduced with theinsect's head turned towards the opening. Lastly, my artificial cellsare closed in different ways. Some receive a stopper of kneaded clay, which, when dry, will correspond in thickness and consistency with themortar ceiling of the natural nest. Others are plugged with a cylinderof sorghum, at least a centimetre (. 39 inch--Translator's Note. ) thick;and the remainder with a disk of brown paper solidly fastened by theedge. All these bits of reed are placed side by side in a box, standingupright, with the roof of my making at the top. The insects, therefore, are in the exact position which they occupied in the nest. To open apassage, they must do what they would have done without my interference, they must break through the wall situated above their heads. I shelterthe whole under a wide bell-glass and wait for the month of May, theperiod of the deliverance. 

The results far exceed my anticipations. The clay stopper, the work ofmy fingers, is perforated with a round hole, differing in no wise fromthat which the Mason-bee contrives through her native mortar dome. Thevegetable barrier, new to my prisoners, namely, the sorghum cylinder, also opens with a neat orifice, which might have been the work of apunch. Lastly, the brown-paper cover allows the Bee to make her exitnot by bursting through, by making a violent rent, but once more by aclearly defined round hole. My Bees therefore are capable of a task forwhich they were not born; to come out of their reed cells they do whatprobably none of their race did before them; they perforate the wall ofsorghum-pith, they make a hole in the paper barrier, just as they wouldhave pierced their natural clay ceiling. When the moment comes to freethemselves, the nature of the impediment does not stop them, providedthat it be not beyond their strength; and henceforth the argument ofincapacity cannot be raised when a mere paper barrier is in question. 

In addition to the cells made out of bits of reed, I put under thebell-glass, at the same time, two nests which are intact and stillresting on their pebbles. To one of them I have attached a sheet ofbrown paper pressed close against the mortar dome. In order to come out, the insect will have to pierce first the dome and then the paper, whichfollows without any intervening space. Over the other, I have placed alittle brown paper cone, gummed to the pebble. There is here, therefore, as in the first case, a double wall--a clay partition and a paperpartition--with this difference, that the two walls do not comeimmediately after each other, but are separated by an empty space ofabout a centimetre at the bottom, increasing as the cone rises. 

The results of these two experiments are quite different. The Beesin the nest to which a sheet of paper was tightly stuck come out bypiercing the two enclosures, of which the outer wall, the paper wrapper, is perforated with a very clean round hole, as we have already seen inthe reed cells closed with a lid of the same material. We thus becomeaware, for the second time, that, when the Mason-bee is stopped bya paper barrier, the reason is not her incapacity to overcome theobstacle. On the other hand, the occupants of the nest covered with thecone, after making their way through the earthen dome, finding the sheetof paper at some distance, do not even try to perforate this obstacle, which they would have conquered so easily had it been fastened to thenest. They die under the cover without making any attempt to escape. Even so did Reaumur's Bees perish in the glass funnel, where theirliberty depended only upon their cutting through a bit of gauze. 

This fact strikes me as rich in inferences. What! Here are sturdyinsects, to whom boring through granite is mere play, to whom a stopperof soft wood and a paper partition are walls quite easy to perforatedespite the novelty of the material; and yet these vigoroushousebreakers allow themselves to perish stupidly in the prison of apaper bag, which they could have torn open with one stroke of theirmandibles! They are capable of tearing it, but they do not dream ofdoing so! There can be only one explanation of this suicidal inaction. The insect is well-endowed with tools and instinctive faculties foraccomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act ofemerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide itwith scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to cut, gnaw throughand demolish either its cocoon and its mortar enclosure or any other nottoo obstinate barrier substituted for the natural covering of the nest. Moreover--and this is an important proviso, except for which the outfitwould be useless--it has, I will not say the will to use those tools, but a secret stimulus inviting it to employ them. When the hour for theemergence arrives, this stimulus is aroused and the insect sets to workto bore a passage. It little cares in this case whether the material tobe pierced be the natural mortar, sorghum-pith, or paper: the lid thatholds it imprisoned does not resist for long. Nor even does it care ifthe obstacle be increased in thickness and a paper wall be added outsidethe wall of clay: the two barriers, with no interval between them, formbut one to the Bee, who passes through them because the act of gettingout is still one act and one only. With the paper cone, whose wall is alittle way off, the conditions are changed, though the total thicknessof wall is really the same. Once outside its earthen abode, the insecthas done all that it was destined to do in order to release itself; tomove freely on the mortar dome represents to it the end of the release, the end of the act of boring. Around the nest a new barrier appears, the wall made by the paper bag; but, in order to pierce this, the insectwould have to repeat the act which it has just accomplished, the actwhich it is not intended to perform more than once in its life; itwould, in short, have to make into a double act that which by nature isa single one; and the insect cannot do this, for the sole reason thatit has not the wish to. The Mason-bee perishes for lack of the smallestgleam of intelligence. And this is the singular intellect in which itis the fashion nowadays to see a germ of human reason! The fashion willpass and the facts remain, bringing us back to the good old notions ofthe soul and its immortal destinies. 

Reaumur tells us how his friend Duhamel, having seized a Mason-bee witha forceps when she had half entered the cell, head foremost, to fillit with pollen-paste, carried her to a closet at some distance from thespot where he captured her. The Bee got away from him in this closetand flew out through the window. Duhamel made straight for the nest. TheMason arrived almost as soon as he did and renewed her work. She onlyseemed a little wilder, says the narrator, in conclusion. 

Why were you not here with me, revered master, on the banks of theAygues, which is a vast expanse of pebbles for three-fourths of the yearand a mighty torrent when it rains? I should have shown you somethinginfinitely better than the fugitive escaping from the forceps. You wouldhave witnessed--and in so doing, would have shared my surprise--not thebrief flight of the Mason who, carried to the nearest room, releases herself and forthwith returns to her nest in that familiarneighbourhood, but long journeys through unknown country. You would haveseen the Bee whom I carried to a great distance from her home, to quiteunfamiliar ground, find her way back with a geographical sense of whichthe Swallow, the Martin and the Carrier-pigeon would not havebeen ashamed; and you would have asked yourself, as I did, whatincomprehensible knowledge of the local map guides that mother seekingher nest. 

To come to facts: it is a matter of repeating with the Mason-bee of theWalls my former experiments with the Cerceris-wasps (Cf. "Insect Life":chapter 19. --Translator's Note. ), of carrying the insect, in the dark, a long way from its nest, marking it and then leaving it to its ownresources. In case any one should wish to try the experiment forhimself, I make him a present of my manner of operation, which may savehim time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey mustobviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no forcepsemployed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and weaken thepower of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in her work, Iplace a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she fliesaway, rushes into the tube, which enables me, without touching her, totransfer her at once into a screw of paper. This I quickly close. A tinbox, an ordinary botanizing-case, serves to convey the prisoners, eachin her separate paper bag. 

The most delicate business, that of marking each captive beforesetting her free, is left to be done on the spot selected for thestarting-point. I use finely-powdered chalk, steeped in a strongsolution of gum arabic. The mixture, applied to some part of the insectwith a straw, leaves a white patch, which soon dries and adheres tothe fleece. When a particular Mason-bee has to be marked so as todistinguish her from another in short experiments, such as I shalldescribe presently, I confine myself to touching the tip of the abdomenwith my straw while the insect is half in the cell, head downwards. Theslight touch is not noticed by the Bee, who continues her work quiteundisturbed; but the mark is not very deep and moreover it is in arather bad place for any prolonged experiment, for the Bee is constantlybrushing her belly to detach the pollen and is sure to rub it off sooneror later. I therefore make another one, dropping the sticky chalk rightin the middle of the thorax, between the wings. 

It is hardly possible to wear gloves at this work: the fingers need alltheir deftness to take up the restless Bee delicately and to overpowerher without rough pressure. It is easily seen that, though the job mayyield no other profit, you are at least sure of being stung. The stingcan be avoided with a little dexterity, but not always. You have to putup with it. In any case, the Mason-bee's sting is far less painful thanthat of the Hive-bee. The white spot is dropped on the thorax; the Masonflies off; and the mark dries on the journey. 

I start with two Mason-bees of the Walls working at their nests on thepebbles in the alluvia of the Aygues, not far from Serignan. I carrythem home with me to Orange, where I release them after marking them. According to the ordnance-survey map, the distance is about two and ahalf miles as the crow flies. The captives are set at liberty in theevening, at a time when the Bees begin to leave off work for the day. It is therefore probable that my two Bees will spend their night in theneighbourhood. 

Next morning, I go to the nests. The weather is still too cool and theworks are suspended. When the dew has gone, the Masons begin work. I seeone, but without a white spot, bringing pollen to one of the nestswhich had been occupied by the travellers whom I am expecting. She isa stranger who, finding the cell whose owner I myself had exileduntenanted, has installed herself there and made it her property, notknowing that it is already the property of another. She has perhaps beenvictualling it since yesterday evening. Close upon ten o'clock, whenthe heat is at its full, the mistress of the house suddenly arrives: hertitle-deeds as the original occupant are inscribed for me in undeniablecharacters on her thorax white with chalk. Here is one of my travellersback. 

Over waving corn, over fields all pink with sainfoin, she has coveredthe two miles and a half; and here she is, back at the nest, afterforaging on the way, for the doughty creature arrives with her abdomenyellow with pollen. To come home again from the verge of the horizonis wonderful in itself; to come home with a well-filled pollen-brush issuperlative economy. A journey, even a forced journey, always becomes aforaging-expedition. 

She finds the stranger in the nest:

'What's this? I'll teach you!'

And the owner falls furiously upon the intruder, who possibly wasmeaning no harm. A hot chase in mid-air now takes place between the twoMasons. From time to time, they hover almost without movement, face toface, with only a couple of inches separating them, and here, doubtlessmeasuring forces with their eyes, they buzz insults at each other. Thenthey go back and alight on the nest in dispute, first one, then theother. I expect to see them come to blows, to make them draw theirstings. But my hopes are disappointed: the duties of maternity speakin too imperious a voice for them to risk their lives and wipe outthe insult in a mortal duel. The whole thing is confined to hostiledemonstrations and a few insignificant cuffs. 

Nevertheless, the real proprietress seems to derive double courage anddouble strength from the feeling that she is in her rights. She takes upa permanent position on the nest and receives the other, each timethat she ventures to approach, with an angry quiver of her wings, anunmistakable sign of her righteous indignation. The stranger, at lastdiscouraged, retires from the field. Forthwith the Mason resumes herwork, as actively as though she had not just undergone the hardships ofa long journey. 

One more word on these quarrels about property. It is not unusual, when one Mason-bee is away on an expedition, for another, some homelessvagabond, to call at the nest, take a fancy to it and set to work on it, sometimes at the same cell, sometimes at the next, if there areseveral vacant, which is generally the case in the old nests. The firstoccupier, on her return, never fails to drive away the intruder, whoalways ends by being turned out, so keen and invincible is the mistress'sense of ownership. Reversing the savage Prussian maxim, 'Might isright, ' among the Mason-bees right is might, for there is no otherexplanation of the invariable retreat of the usurper, whose strength isnot a whit inferior to that of the real owner. If she is less bold, thisis because she has not the tremendous moral support of knowing herselfin the right, which makes itself respected, among equals, even in thebrute creation. 

The second of my travellers does not reappear, either on the day whenthe first arrived or on the following days. I decide upon anotherexperiment, on this occasion with five subjects. The starting-place isthe same; and the place of arrival, the distance, the time of day, allremain unchanged. Of the five with whom I experiment, I find three attheir nests next day; the two others are missing. 

It is therefore fully established that the Mason-bee of the Walls, carried to a distance of two and a half miles and released at a placewhich she has certainly never seen before, is able to return to thenest. But why do first one out of two and then two out of five failto join their fellows? What one can do cannot another do? Is there adifference in the faculty that guides them over unknown ground? Or is itnot rather a difference in flying-power? I remember that my Bees did notall start off with the same vigour. Some were hardly out of my fingersbefore they darted furiously into the air, where I at once lost sightof them, whereas the others came dropping down a few yards away from me, after a short flight. The latter, it seems certain, must have sufferedon the journey, perhaps from the heat concentrated in the furnace of mybox. Or I may have hurt the articulation of the wings in marking them, an operation difficult to perform when you are guarding againststings. These are maimed, feeble creatures, who will linger in thesainfoin-fields close by, and not the powerful aviators required by thejourney. 

The experiment must be tried again, taking count only of the Beeswho start off straight from between my fingers with a clean, vigorousflight. The waverers, the laggards who stop almost at once on somebush shall be left out of the reckoning. Moreover, I will do my best toestimate the time taken in returning to the nest. For an experiment ofthis kind, I need plenty of subjects, as the weak and the maimed, ofwhom there may be many, are to be disregarded. The Mason-bee of theWalls is unable to supply me with the requisite number: there are notenough of her; and I am anxious not to interfere too much with thelittle Aygues-side colony, for whom I have other experiments in view. Fortunately, I have at my own place, under the eaves of a shed, amagnificent nest of Chalicodoma sicula in full activity. I can draw towhatever extent I please on the populous city. The insect is small, lessthan half the size of C. Muraria, but no matter: it will deserve all themore credit if it can traverse the two miles and a half in store for itand find its way back to the nest. I take forty Bees, isolating them, asusual, in screws of paper. 

In order to reach the nest, I place a ladder against the wall: it willbe used by my daughter Aglae and will enable her to mark the exactmoment of the return of the first Bee. I set the clock on themantelpiece and my watch at the same time, so that we may compare theinstant of departure and of arrival. Things being thus arranged, I carryoff my forty captives and go to the identical spot where C. Murariaworks, in the pebbly bed of the Aygues. The trip will have a doubleobject: to observe Reaumur's Mason and to set the Sicilian Mason atliberty. The latter, therefore, will also have two and a half miles totravel home. 

At last my prisoners are released, all of them being first marked with abig white dot in the middle of the thorax. 

You do not come off scot-free when handling one after the other fortywrathful Bees, who promptly unsheathe and brandish their poisonedstings. The stab is but too often given before the mark is made. Mysmarting fingers make movements of self-defence which my will is notalways able to control. I take hold with greater precaution for myselfthan for the insect; I sometimes squeeze harder than I ought to if I amto spare my travellers. To experiment so as to lift, if possible, atiny corner of the veil of truth is a fine and noble thing, a mightystimulant in the face of danger; but still one may be excused fordisplaying some impatience when it is a matter of receiving forty stingsin one's fingers at one short sitting. If any man should reproach me forbeing too careless with my thumbs, I would suggest that he should have atry: he can then judge for himself the pleasures of the situation. 

To cut a long story short, either through the fatigue of the journey, or through my fingers pressing too hard and perhaps injuring somearticulations, only twenty out of my forty Bees start with a bold, vigorous flight. The others, unable to keep their balance, wander abouton the nearest bit of grass or remain on the osier-shoots on which Ihave placed them, refusing to fly even when I tickle them with a straw. These weaklings, these cripples, these incapables injured by my fingersmust be struck off my list. Those who started with an unhesitatingflight number about twenty. That is ample. 

At the actual moment of departure, there is nothing definite about thedirection taken, none of that straight flight to the nest which theCerceris-wasps once showed me in similar circumstances. As soon asthey are liberated, the Mason-bees flee as though scared, some in onedirection, some in exactly the opposite direction. Nevertheless, as faras their impetuous flight allows, I seem to perceive a quick return onthe part of those Bees who have started flying towards a point oppositeto their home; and the majority appear to me to be making for thoseblue distances where their nest lies. I leave this question with certaindoubts which are inevitable in the case of insects which I cannot followwith my eyes for more than twenty yards. 

Hitherto, the operation has been favoured by calm weather; but nowthings become complicated. The heat is stifling and the sky becomesstormy. A stiff breeze springs up, blowing from the south, the verydirection which my Bees must take to return to the nest. Can theyovercome this opposing current and cleave the aerial torrent with theirwings? If they try, they will have to fly close to the ground, as Inow see the Bees do who continue their foraging; but soaring to loftyregions, whence they can obtain a clear view of the country, is, soit seems to me, prohibited. I am therefore very apprehensive as to thesuccess of my experiment when I return to Orange, after first trying tosteal some fresh secret from the Aygues Mason-bee of the Pebbles. 

I have scarcely reached the house before Aglae greets me, her cheeksflushed with excitement:

'Two!' she cries. 'Two came back at twenty minutes to three, with a loadof pollen under their bellies!'

A friend of mine had appeared upon the scene, a grave man of the law, who on hearing what was happening, had neglected code and stampedpaper and insisted upon also being present at the arrival of myCarrier-pigeons. The result interested him more than his case about aparty-wall. Under a tropical sun, in a furnace heat reflected from thewall of the shed, every five minutes he climbed the ladder bare-headed, with no other protection against sunstroke than his thatch of thick, grey locks. Instead of the one observer whom I had posted, I found twogood pairs of eyes watching the Bees' return. 

I had released my insects at about two o'clock; and the first arrivalsreturned to the nest at twenty minutes to three. They had thereforetaken less than three-quarters of an hour to cover the two miles and ahalf, a very striking result, especially when we remember that the Beesdid some foraging on the road, as was proved by the yellow pollen ontheir bellies, and that, on the other hand, the travellers' flight musthave been hindered by the wind blowing against them. Three more camehome before my eyes, each with her load of pollen, an outward andvisible sign of the work done on the journey. As it was growing late, our observations had to cease. When the sun goes down, the Mason-beesleave the nest and take refuge somewhere or other, perhaps under thetiles of the roofs, or in little corners of the walls. I could notreckon on the arrival of the others before work was resumed, in the fullsunshine. 

Next day, when the sun recalled the scattered workers to the nest, Itook a fresh census of Bees with a white spot on the thorax. My successexceeded all my hopes: I counted fifteen, fifteen of the transportedprisoners of the day before, storing their cells or building as thoughnothing out of the way had happened. The weather had become moreand more threatening; and now the storm burst and was followed by asuccession of rainy days which prevented me from continuing. 

The experiment suffices as it stands. Of some twenty Bees who had seemedfit to make the long journey when I released them, fifteen at least hadreturned: two within the first hour, three in the course of the eveningand the rest next morning. They had returned in spite of having thewind against them and--a graver difficulty still--in spite of beingunacquainted with the locality to which I had transported them. Thereis, in fact, no doubt that they were setting eyes for the first timeon those osier-beds of the Aygues which I had selected as thestarting-point. Never would they have travelled so far afield of theirown accord, for everything that they want for building and victuallingunder the roof of my shed is within easy reach. The path at the foot ofthe wall supplies the mortar; the flowery meadows surrounding my housefurnish nectar and pollen. Economical of their time as they are, theydo not go flying two miles and a half in search of what abounds at afew yards from the nest. Besides, I see them daily taking theirbuilding-materials from the path and gathering their harvest on thewild-flowers, especially on the meadow sage. To all appearance, theirexpeditions do not cover more than a radius of a hundred yards or so. Then how did my exiles return? What guided them? It was certainly notmemory, but some special faculty which we must content ourselves withrecognizing by its astonishing effects without pretending to explain it, so greatly does it transcend our own psychology. 

CHAPTER 3. EXCHANGING THE NESTS. 

Let us continue our series of tests with the Mason-bee of the Walls. Thanks to its position on a pebble which we can move at will, the nestof this Bee lends itself to most interesting experiments. Here is thefirst: I shift a nest from its place, that is to say, I carry the pebblewhich serves as its support to a spot two yards away. As the edificeand its base form but one, the removal is performed without the smallestdisturbance of the cells. I lay the boulder in an exposed place where itis well in view, as it was on its original site. The Bee returning fromher harvest cannot fail to see it. 

In a few minutes, the owner arrives and goes straight to where the neststood. She hovers gracefully over the vacant site, examines and alightsupon the exact spot where the stone used to lie. Here she walks aboutfor a long time, making persistent searches; then the Bee takes wing andflies away to some distance. Her absence is of short duration. Here sheis back again. The search is resumed, walking and flying, and always onthe site which the nest occupied at first. A fresh fit of exasperation, that is to say, an abrupt flight across the osier-bed, is followed by afresh return and a renewal of the vain search, always upon the mark leftby the shifted pebble. These sudden departures, these prompt returns, these persevering inspections of the deserted spot continue for a longtime, a very long time, before the Mason is convinced that her nest isgone. She has certainly seen it, has seen it over and over again in itsnew position, for sometimes she has flown only a few inches above it;but she takes no notice of it. To her, it is not her nest, but theproperty of another Bee. 

Often the experiment ends without so much as a single visit to theboulder which I have moved two or three yards away: the Bee goes off anddoes not return. If the distance be less, a yard for instance, theMason sooner or later alights on the stone which supports her abode. Sheinspects the cell which she was building or provisioning a little whilebefore, repeatedly dips her head into it, examines the surface of thepebble step by step and, after long hesitations, goes and resumes hersearch on the site where the home ought to be. The nest that is nolonger in its natural place is definitely abandoned, even though it bebut a yard away from the original spot. Vainly does the Bee settle onit time after time: she cannot recognize it as hers. I was convinced ofthis on finding it, several days after the experiment, in just the samecondition as when I moved it. The open cell half-filled with honey wasstill open and was surrendering its contents to the pillaging Ants; thecell that was building had remained unfinished, with not a single layeradded to it. The Bee, obviously, may have returned to it; but she hadnot resumed work upon it. The transplanted dwelling was abandoned forgood and all. 

I will not deduce the strange paradox that the Mason-bee, though capableof finding her nest from the verge of the horizon, is incapable offinding it at a yard's distance: I interpret the occurrence as meaningsomething quite different. The proper inference appears to me to bethis: the Bee retains a rooted impression of the site occupied by thenest and returns to it with unwearying persistence even when the nest isgone. But she has only a very vague notion of the nest itself. She doesnot recognize the masonry which she herself has erected and kneaded withher saliva; she does not know the pollen-paste which she herself hasstored. In vain she inspects her cell, her own handiwork; she abandonsit, refusing to acknowledge it as hers, once the spot whereon the pebblerests is changed. 

Insect memory, it must be confessed, is a strange one, displaying suchlucidity in its general acquaintance with locality and such limitationsin its knowledge of the dwelling. I feel inclined to call ittopographical instinct: it grasps the map of the country and not thebeloved nest, the home itself. The Bembex-wasps (Cf. "Insect Life":chapters 16 to 19. --Translator's Note. ) have already led us to a likeconclusion. When the nest is laid open, these Wasps become whollyindifferent to the family, to the grub writhing in agony in the sun. They do not recognize it. What they do recognize, what they seek andfind with marvellous precision, is the site of the entrance-door ofwhich nothing at all is left, not even the threshold. 

If any doubts remained as to the incapacity of the Mason-bee of theWalls to know her nest other than by the place which the pebble occupieson the ground, here is something to remove them: for the nest of oneMason-bee, I substitute that of another, resembling it as closely aspossible in respect to both masonry and storage. This exchange andthose of which I shall speak presently are of course made in the owner'sabsence. The Bee settles without hesitation in this nest which is nothers, but which stands where the other did. If she was building, I offerher a cell in process of building. She continues the masonry with thesame care and the same zeal as if the work already done were herown work. If she was fetching honey and pollen, I offer her apartly-provisioned cell. She continues her journeys, with honey in hercrop and pollen under her belly, to finish filling another's warehouse. The Bee, therefore, does not suspect the exchange; she does notdistinguish between what is her property and what is not; she imaginesthat she is still working at the cell which is really hers. 

After leaving her for a time in possession of the strange nest, I giveher back her own. This fresh change passes unperceived by the Bee: thework is continued in the cell restored to her at the point which it hadreached in the substituted cell. I once more replace it by the strangenest; and again the insect persists in continuing its labour. By thusconstantly interchanging the strange nest and the proper nest, withoutaltering the actual site, I thoroughly convinced myself of the Bee'sinability to discriminate between what is her work and what is not. Whether the cell belong to her or to another, she labours at it withequal zest, so long as the basis of the edifice, the pebble, continuesto occupy its original position. 

The experiment receives an added interest if we employ two neighbouringnests the work on which is about equally advanced. I move each to wherethe other stood. They are not much more than thirty inches a part. Inspite of their being so near to each other that it is quite possible forthe insects to see both homes at once and choose between them, each Bee, on arriving, settles immediately on the substituted nest and continuesher work there. Change the two nests as often as you please and youshall see the two Mason-bees keep to the site which they selected andlabour in turn now at their own cell and now at the other's. 

One might think that the cause of this confusion lies in a closeresemblance between the two nests, for at the start, little expectingthe results which I was to obtain, I used to choose the nests which Iinterchanged as much alike as possible, for fear of disheartening theBees. I need not have taken this precaution: I was giving the insectcredit for a perspicacity which it does not possess. Indeed, I nowtake two nests which are extremely unlike each other, the only point ofresemblance being that, in each case, the toiler finds a cell in whichshe can continue the work which she is actually doing. The first is anold nest whose dome is perforated with eight holes, the apertures of thecells of the previous generation. One of these cells has been repaired;and the Bee is busy storing it. The second is a nest of recentconstruction, which has not received its mortar dome and consists ofa single cell with its stucco covering. Here too the insect is busyhoarding pollen-paste. No two nests could present greater differences:one with its eight empty chambers and its spreading clay dome; the otherwith its single bare cell, at most the size of an acorn. 

Well, the two Mason-bees do not hesitate long in front of theseexchanged nests, not three feet away from each other. Each makes for thesite of her late home. One, the original owner of the old nest, findsnothing but a solitary cell. She rapidly inspects the pebble and, without further formalities, first plunges her head into the strangecell, to disgorge honey, and then her abdomen, to deposit pollen. Andthis is not an action due to the imperative need of ridding herself asquickly as possible, no matter where, of an irksome load, for the Beeflies off and soon comes back again with a fresh supply of provender, which she stores away carefully. This carrying of provisions toanother's larder is repeated as often as I permit it. The other Bee, finding instead of her one cell a roomy structure consisting of eightapartments, is at first not a little embarrassed. Which of the eightcells is the right one? In which is the heap of paste on which she hadbegun? The Bee therefore visits the chambers one by one, dives rightdown to the bottom and ends by finding what she seeks, that is to say, what was in her nest when she started on her last journey, the nucleusof a store of food. Thenceforward she behaves like her neighbour andgoes on carrying honey and pollen to the warehouse which is not of herconstructing. 

Restore the nests to their original places, exchange them yet onceagain and both Bees, after a short hesitation which the great differencebetween the two nests is enough to explain, will pursue the work in thecell of her own making and in the strange cell alternately. At last theegg is laid and the sanctuary closed, no matter what nest happens to beoccupied at the moment when the provisioning reaches completion. Theseincidents are sufficient to show why I hesitate to give the name ofmemory to the singular faculty that brings the insect back to her nestwith such unerring precision and yet does not allow her to distinguishher work from some one else's, however great the difference may be. 

We will now experiment with Chalicodoma muraria from anotherpsychological point of view. Here is a Mason-bee building; she is atwork on the first course of her cell. I give her in exchange a cell notonly finished as a structure, but also filled nearly to the top withhoney. I have just stolen it from its owner, who would not have beenlong before laying her egg in it. What will the Mason do in the presenceof this munificent gift, which saves her the trouble of building andharvesting? She will leave the mortar no doubt, finish storing theBee-bread, lay her egg and seal up. A mistake, an utter mistake:our logic is not the logic of the insect, which obeys an inevitable, unconscious prompting. It has no choice as to what it shall do; itcannot discriminate between what is and what is not advisable; itglides, as it were, down an irresistible slope prepared beforehand tobring it to a definite end. This is what the facts that still remain tobe stated proclaim with no uncertain voice. 

The Bee who was building and to whom I offer a cell ready-built and fullof honey does not lay aside her mortar for that. She was doing mason'swork; and, once on that tack, guided by the unconscious impulse, shehas to keep masoning, even though her labour be useless, superfluousand opposed to her interests. The cell which I give her is certainlyperfect, looked upon as a building, in the opinion of the master-builderherself, since the Bee from whom I took it was completing the provisionof honey. To touch it up, especially to add to it, is useless and, whatis more, absurd. No matter: the Bee who was masoning will mason. On theaperture of the honey-store she lays a first course of mortar, followedby another and yet another, until at last the cell is a third tallerthen the regulation height. The masonry-task is now done, not asperfectly, it is true, as if the Bee had gone on with the cell whosefoundations she was laying at the moment when I exchanged the nests, butstill to an extent which is more than enough to prove the overpoweringimpulse which the builder obeys. Next comes the victualling, which isalso cut short, lest the honey-store swelled by the joint contributionsof the two Bees should overflow. Thus the Mason-bee who is beginningto build and to whom we give a complete cell, a cell filled with honey, makes no change in the order of her work: she builds first and thenvictuals. Only she shortens her work, her instinct warning her that theheight of the cell and the quantity of honey are beginning to assumeextravagant proportions. 

The converse is equally conclusive. To a Mason-bee engaged invictualling I give a nest with a cell only just begun and not at all fitto receive the paste. This cell, with its last course still wet with itsbuilder's saliva, may or may not be accompanied by other cells recentlyclosed up, each with its honey and its egg. The Bee, finding this in theplace of her half-filled honey-store, is greatly perplexed what to dowhen she comes with her harvest to this unfinished, shallow cup, inwhich there is no place to put the honey. She inspects it, measuresit with her eyes, tries it with her antennae and recognizes itsinsufficient capacity. She hesitates for a long time, goes away, comesback, flies away again and soon returns, eager to deposit her treasure. The insect's embarrassment is most evident; and I cannot help saying, inwardly:

'Get some mortar, get some mortar and finish making the warehouse. Itwill only take you a few moments; and you will have a cupboard of theright depth. '

The Bee thinks differently: she was storing her cell and she must go onstoring, come what may. Never will she bring herself to lay aside thepollen-brush for the trowel; never will she suspend the foraging whichis occupying her at this moment to begin the work of construction whichis not yet due. She will rather go in search of a strange cell, in thedesired condition, and slip in there to deposit her honey, at the riskof meeting with a warm reception from the irate owner. She goes off, in fact, to try her luck. I wish her success, being myself the causeof this desperate act. My curiosity has turned an honest worker into arobber. 

Things may take a still more serious turn, so invincible, so imperiousis the desire to have the booty stored in a safe place without delay. The uncompleted cell which the Bee refuses to accept instead of herown finished warehouse, half-filled with honey, is often, as I said, accompanied by other cells, not long closed, each containing itsBee-bread and its egg. In this case, I have sometimes, though notalways, witnessed the following: when once the Bee realises theshortcomings of the unfinished nest, she begins to gnaw the clay lidclosing one of the adjoining cells. She softens a part of the mortarcover with saliva and patiently, atom by atom, digs through the hardwall. It is very slow work. A good half-hour elapses before the tinycavity is large enough to admit a pin's head. I wait longer still. ThenI lose patience; and, fully convinced that the Bee is trying to open thestore-room, I decide to help her to shorten the work. The upper partof the cell comes away with it, leaving the edges badly broken. In myawkwardness, I have turned an elegant vase into a wretched cracked pot. 

I was right in my conjecture: the Bee's intention was to break open thedoor. Straight away, without heeding the raggedness of the orifice, shesettles down in the cell which I have opened for her. Time aftertime, she fetches honey and pollen, though the larder is already fullystocked. Lastly, she lays her egg in this cell which already contains anegg that is not hers, having done which she closes the broken apertureto the best of her ability. So this purveyor had neither the knowledgenor the power to bow to the inevitable. I had made it impossible for herto go on with her purveying, unless she first completed the unfinishedcell substituted for her own. But she did not retreat before thatimpossible task. She accomplished her work, but in the absurdest way: byinjuriously trespassing upon another's property, by continuing to storeprovisions in a cupboard already full to overflowing, by laying heregg in a cell in which the real owner had already laid and lastly byhurriedly closing an orifice that called for serious repairs. Whatbetter proof could be wished of the irresistible propensity which theinsect obeys?

Lastly, there are certain swift and consecutive actions so closelyinterlinked that the performance of the second demands a previousrepetition of the first, even when this action has become useless. Ihave already described how the Yellow-winged Sphex (Cf. "Insect Life":chapters 6 to 9. --Translator's Note. ) persists in descending intoher burrow alone, after depositing at its edge the Cricket whom Imaliciously at once remove. Her repeated discomfitures do not make herabandon the preliminary inspection of the home, an inspection whichbecomes quite useless when renewed for the tenth or twentieth time. The Mason-bee of the Walls shows us, under another form, a similarrepetition of an act which is useless in itself, but which is thecompulsory preface to the act that follows. When arriving with herprovisions, the Bee performs a twofold operation of storing. First, shedives head foremost into the cell, to disgorge the contents of her crop;next, she comes out and at once goes in again backwards, to brush herabdomen and rub off the load of pollen. At the moment when the insectis about to enter the cell tail first, I push her aside gently with astraw. The second act is thus prevented. The Bee now begins the wholeperformance over again, that is to say, she once more dives head firstto the bottom of the cell, though she has nothing left to disgorge, asher crop has just been emptied. When this is done, it is the belly'sturn. I instantly push her aside again. The insect repeats itsproceedings, still entering head first; I also repeat my touch of thestraw. And this can go on as long as the observer pleases. Pushed asideat the moment when she is about to insert her abdomen into the cell, theBee goes back to the opening and persists in going down head firstto begin with. Sometimes, she descends to the bottom, sometimes onlyhalf-way, sometimes again she only pretends to descend, just bending herhead into the aperture; but, whether completed or not, this action, forwhich there is no longer any motive, since the honey has already beendisgorged, invariably precedes the entrance backwards to deposit thepollen. It is almost the movement of a machine whose works are only setgoing when the driving-wheel begins to revolve. 

CHAPTER 4. MORE ENQUIRIES INTO MASON-BEES. 

This chapter was to have taken the form of a letter addressed to CharlesDarwin, the illustrious naturalist who now lies buried beside Newton inWestminster Abbey. It was my task to report to him the result ofsome experiments which he had suggested to me in the course of ourcorrespondence: a very pleasant task, for, though facts, as I see them, disincline me to accept his theories, I have none the less the deepestveneration for his noble character and his scientific honesty. I wasdrafting my letter when the sad news reached me: Darwin was dead; aftersearching the mighty question of origins, he was now grappling withthe last and darkest problem of the hereafter. (Darwin died at Down, in Kent, on the 19th of April 1882. --Translator's Note. ) I thereforeabandon the epistolary form, which would be unwarranted in view of thatgrave at Westminster. A free and impersonal statement shall set forthwhat I intended to relate in a more academic manner. 

One thing, above all, had struck the English scientist on reading thefirst volume of my "Souvenirs entomologiques", namely, the Mason-bees'faculty of knowing the way back to their nests after being carried togreat distances from home. What sort of compass do they employ on theirreturn journeys? What sense guides them? The profound observer thereuponspoke of an experiment which he had always longed to make with Pigeonsand which he had always neglected making, absorbed as he was by otherinterests. This experiment, he thought, I might attempt with my Bees. Substitute the insect for the bird; and the problem remained the same. Iquote from his letter the passage referring to the trial which he wishedmade:

'Allow me to make a suggestion in relation to your wonderful accountof insects finding their way home. I formerly wished to try it withpigeons; namely, to carry the insects in their paper cornets abouta hundred paces in the opposite direction to that which you intendedultimately to carry them, but before turning round to return, to put theinsects in a circular box with an axle which could be made to revolvevery rapidly first in one direction and then in another, so as todestroy for a time all sense of direction in the insects. I havesometimes imagined that animals may feel in which direction they were atthe first start carried. '

This method of experimenting seemed to me very ingeniously conceived. Before going west, I walk eastwards. In the darkness of their paperbags, the mere fact that I am moving them gives my prisoners a sense ofthe direction in which I am taking them. If nothing happened to disturbthis first impression, the insect would be guided by it in returning. This would explain the homing of my Mason-bees carried to a distance oftwo or three miles amid strange surroundings. But, when the insects havebeen sufficiently impressed by their conveyance to the east, there comesthe rapid twirl, first this way round, then that. Bewildered by allthese revolutions first in one direction and then in another, the insectdoes not know that I have turned round and remains under its originalimpression. I am now taking it to the west, when it believes itselfto be still travelling towards the east. Under the influence of thisimpression; the insect is bound to lose its bearings. When set free, itwill fly in the opposite direction to its home, which it will never findagain. 

This result seemed to me the more probable inasmuch as the statementsof the country-folk around me were all of a nature to confirm my hopes. Favier (The author's gardener and factotum. Cf. "The Life of theFly": chapter 4. --Translator's Note. ), the very man for this sort ofinformation, was the first to put me on the track. He told me that, whenpeople want to move a Cat from one farm to another at some distance, they place the animal in a bag which they twirl rapidly at the moment ofstarting, thus preventing the animal from returning to the house whichit has quitted. Many others, besides Favier, described the same practiceto me. According to them, this twirling round in a bag was an infallibleexpedient: the bewildered Cat never returned. I communicated what Ihad learnt to England, I wrote to the sage of Down and told him how thepeasant had anticipated the researches of science. Charles Darwin wasamazed; so was I; and we both of us almost reckoned on a success. 

These preliminaries took place in the winter; I had plenty of time toprepare for the experiment which was to be made in the following May. 

'Favier, ' I said, one day, to my assistant, 'I shall want some of thosenests. Go and ask our next-door neighbour's leave and climb to the roofof his shed, with some new tiles and some mortar, which you can fetchfrom the builder's. Take a dozen tiles from the roof, those with thebiggest nests on them, and put the new ones in their place. '

Things were done accordingly. My neighbour assented with a good grace tothe exchange of tiles, for he himself is obliged, from time to time, todemolish the work of the Mason-bee, unless he would risk seeing his rooffall in sooner or later. I was merely forestalling a repair which becamemore urgent every year. That same evening, I was in possession of twelvemagnificent rectangular blocks of nest, each lying on the convex surfaceof a tile, that is to say, on the surface looking towards the inside ofthe shed. I had the curiosity to weigh the largest: it turned the scaleat thirty-five pounds. Now the roof whence it came was covered withsimilar masses, adjoining one another, over a stretch of some seventytiles. Reckoning only half the weight, so as to strike an averagebetween the largest and the smallest lumps, we find the total weight ofthe Bee's masonry to amount to three-quarters of a ton. And, even so, people tell me that they have seen this beaten elsewhere. Leave theMason-bee to her own devices, in the spot that suits her; allow thework of many generations to accumulate; and, one fine day, the roof willbreak down under the extra burden. Let the nests grow old; let themfall to pieces when the damp gets into them; and you will have chunkstumbling on your head big enough to crack your skull. There you see thework of a very little-known insect. (The insect is so little known thatI made a serious mistake when treating of it in the first volume ofthese "Souvenirs. " Under my erroneous denomination of Chalicodomasicula are really comprised two species, one building its nests inour dwellings and particularly under the tiles of outhouses, the otherbuilding its nests on the branches of shrubs. The first species hasreceived various names, which are, in order of priority: Chalicodomapyrenaica, LEP. (Megachile); Chalicodoma pyrrhopeza, GERSTACKER;Chalicodoma rufitarsis, GIRAUD. It is a pity that the name occupying thefirst place should lend itself to misconception. I hesitate to applythe epithet of Pyrenean to an insect which is much less common in thePyrenees than in my own district. I shall call it the Chalicodoma, orMason-bee, of the Sheds. There is no objection to the use of this namein a book where the reader prefers lucidity to the tyranny of systematicentomology. The second species, that which builds its nests on thebranches, is Chalicodoma rufescens, J. PEREZ. For a like reason, I shallcall it the Chalicodoma of the Shrubs. I owe these corrections to thekindness of Professor Jean Perez, of Bordeaux, who is so well-versed inthe lore of Wasps and Bees. --Author's Note. )

These treasures were insufficient, not in regard to quantity, but inregard to quality, for the main object which I had in view. They camefrom the nearest house, separated from mine by a little field plantedwith corn and olive-trees. I had reason to fear that the insects issuingfrom those nests might be hereditarily influenced by their ancestors, who had lived in the shed for many a long year. The Bee, when carriedto a distance, would perhaps come back, guided by the inveterate familyhabit; she would find the shed of her lineal predecessors and thence, without difficulty, reach her nest. As it is the fashion nowadays toassign a prominent part to these hereditary influences, I must eliminatethem from my experiments. I want strange Bees, brought from afar, whosereturn to the place of their birth can in no way assist their return tothe nest transplanted to another site. 

Favier took the business in hand. He had discovered on the banks ofthe Aygues, at some miles from the village, a deserted hut where theMason-bees had established themselves in a numerous colony. He proposedto take the wheelbarrow, in which to move the blocks of cells; butI objected: the jolting of the vehicle over the rough paths mightjeopardise the contents of the cells. A basket carried on the shoulderwas deemed safer. Favier took a man to help him and set out. Theexpedition provided me with four well-stocked tiles. It was all that thetwo men were able to carry between them; and even then I had to standtreat on their arrival: they were utterly exhausted. Le Vaillant tellsus of a nest of Republicans (Social Weaver-birds. --Translator's Note. )with which he loaded a wagon drawn by two oxen. My Mason-bee vies withthe South-African bird: a yoke of Oxen would not have been too many tomove the whole of that nest from the banks of the Aygues. 

The next thing is to place my tiles. I want to have them under my eyes, in a position where I can watch them easily and save myself the worriesof earlier days: going up and down ladders, standing for hours at astretch on a narrow rung that hurt the soles of my feet and riskingsunstroke up against a scorching wall. Moreover, it is necessary thatmy guests should feel almost as much at home with me as where they comefrom. I must make life pleasant for them, if I should have them growattached to the new dwelling. And I happen to have the very thing forthem. 

Under the leads of my house is a wide arch, the sides of which getthe sun, while the back remains in the shade. There is something foreverybody: the shade for me, the sunlight for my boarders. We fastena stout hook to each tile and hang it on the wall, on a level with oureyes. Half my nests are on the right, half on the left. The generaleffect is rather original. Any one walking in and seeing my show forthe first time begins by taking it for a display of smoked provisions, gammons of some outlandish bacon curing in the sun. On perceiving hismistake, he falls into raptures at these new hives of mine. The newsspreads through the village and more than one pokes fun at it. They lookupon me as a keeper of hybrid Bees:

'I wonder what he's going to make out of that!' say they. 

My hives are in full swing before the end of April. When the work is atits height, the swarm becomes a little eddying, buzzing cloud. Thearch is a much-frequented passage: it leads to a store-room for varioushousehold provisions. The members of my family bully me at first forestablishing this dangerous commonwealth within the precincts of ourhome. They dare not go to fetch things: they would have to pass througha swarm of Bees; and then. . . Look out for stings! There is nothing forit but to prove, once and for all, that the danger does not exist, thatmine is a most peaceable Bee, incapable of stinging so long as she isnot startled. I bring my face close to one of the clay nests, so asalmost to touch it, while it is black with Masons at work; I let myfingers wander through the ranks, I put a few Bees on my hand, I standin the thick of the whirling crowd and never a prick do I receive. Ihave long known their peaceful character. Time was when I used to sharethe common fears, when I hesitated before venturing into a swarm ofAnthophorae or Chalicodomae; nowadays, I have quite got over thoseterrors. If you do not tease the insect, the thought of hurting youwill never occur to it. At the worst, a single specimen, prompted bycuriosity rather than anger, will come and hover in front of your face, examining you with some persistency, but employing a buzz as her onlythreat. Let her be: her scrutiny is quite friendly. 

After a few demonstrations, my household were reassured: all, old andyoung, moved in and out of the arch as though there were nothing unusualabout it. My Bees, far from remaining an object of dread, became anobject of diversion; every one took pleasure in watching the progressof their ingenious work. I was careful not to divulge the secret tostrangers. If any one, coming on business, passed outside the arch whileI was standing before the hanging nests, some such brief dialogue as thefollowing would take place:

'So they know you; that's why they don't sting you?'

'They certainly know me. '

'And me?'

'Oh, you; that's another matter!'

Whereupon the intruder would keep at a respectful distance, which waswhat I wanted. 

It is time that we thought of experimenting. The Mason-bees intendedfor the journey must be marked with a sign whereby I may know them. Asolution of gum arabic, thickened with a colouring-powder, red, blue orsome other shade, is the material which I use to mark my travellers. Thevariety in hue will save me from confusing the subjects of my differentexperiments. 

When making my former investigations, I used to mark the Bees at theplace where I set them free. For this operation, the insects had tobe held in the fingers one after the other; and I was thus exposedto frequent stings, which smarted all the more for being constantlyrepeated. The consequence was that I was not always quite able tocontrol my fingers and thumbs, to the great detriment of my travellers;for I could easily warp their wing-joints and thus weaken their flight. It was worth while improving the method of operation, both in my owninterest and in that of the insect. I must mark the Bee, carry her to adistance and release her, without taking her in my fingers, withoutonce touching her. The experiment was bound to gain by these niceprecautions. I will describe the method which I adopted. 

The Bee is so much engrossed in her work when she buries her abdomenin the cell and rids herself of her load of pollen, or when she isbuilding, that it is easy, at such times, without alarming her, to markthe upper side of the thorax with a straw dipped in the coloured glue. The insect is not disturbed by that slight touch. It flies off; itreturns laden with mortar or pollen. You allow these trips to berepeated until the mark on the thorax is quite dry, which soon happensin the hot sun necessary to the Bee's labours. The next thing is tocatch her and imprison her in a paper bag, still without touchingher. Nothing could be easier. You place a small test-tube over the Beeengrossed in her work; the insect, on leaving, rushes into it and isthence transferred to the paper bag, which is forthwith closed andplaced in the tin box that will serve as a conveyance for the wholeparty. When releasing the Bees, all you have to do is open the bags. Thewhole performance is thus effected without once giving that distressingsqueeze of the fingers. 

Another question remains to be solved before we go further. Whattime-limit shall I allow for this census of the Bees that return tothe nest? Let me explain what I mean. The dot which I have made inthe middle of the thorax with a touch of my sticky straw is not verypermanent: it merely adheres to the hairs. At the same time, it wouldhave been no more lasting if I had held the insect in my fingers. Nowthe Bee often brushes her back: she dusts it each time she leaves thegalleries; besides, she is always rubbing her coat against the walls ofthe cell, which she has to enter and to leave each time that she bringshoney. A Mason-bee, so smartly dressed at the start, at the end ofher work is in rags; her fur is all worn bare and as tattered as amechanic's overall. 

Furthermore, in bad weather, the Mason-bee of the Walls spends the daysand nights in one of the cells of her dome, suspended head downwards. The Mason-bee of the Sheds, as long as there are vacant galleries, doesvery nearly the same: she takes shelter in the galleries, but with herhead at the entrance. Once those old habitations are in use, however, and the building of new cells begun, she selects another retreat. In theharmas (The piece of enclosed waste ground on which the author studieshis insects in their natural state. Cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapter1. --Translator's Note. ), as I have said elsewhere, are stoneheaps, intended for building the surrounding wall. This is wheremy Chalicodomae pass the night. Piled up promiscuously, both sexestogether, they sleep in numerous companies, in crevices between twostones laid closely one on top of the other. Some of these companiesnumber as many as a couple of hundred. The most common dormitory is anarrow groove. Here they all huddle, as far forward as possible, withtheir backs in the groove. I see some lying flat on their backs, likepeople asleep. Should bad weather come on, should the sky cloud over, should the north-wind whistle, they do not stir out. 

With all these things to take into consideration, I cannot expect mydot on the Bee's thorax to last any length of time. By day, the constantbrushing and the rubbing against the partitions of the galleriessoon wipe it off; at night, things are worse still, in the narrowsleeping-room where the Mason-bees take refuge by the hundred. After anight spent in the crevice between two stones, it is not advisable totrust to the mark made yesterday. Therefore, the counting of the numberof Bees that return to the nest must be taken in hand at once; tomorrowwould be too late. And so, as it would be impossible for me to recognizethose of my subjects whose dots had disappeared during the night, I willtake into account only the Bees that return on the same day. 

The question of the rotary machine remains. Darwin advised me to use acircular box with an axle and a handle. I have nothing of the kindin the house. It will be simpler and quite as effective to employ themethod of the countryman who tries to lose his Cat by swinging him in abag. My insects, each one placed by itself in a paper cornet (A cornetis simply the old 'sugar-bag, ' the funnel-shaped paper bag so commonon the continent and still used occasionally by small grocers andtobacconists in England. --Translator's Note. ) or screw, shall be placedin a tin box; the screws of paper shall be wedged in so as to avoidcollisions during the rotation; lastly, the box shall be tied to acord and I will whirl the whole thing round like a sling. With thiscontrivance, it will be quite easy to obtain any rate of speed that Iwish, any variety of inverse movements that I consider likely to makemy captives lose their bearings. I can whirl my sling first in onedirection and then in another, turn and turn about; I can slacken orincrease the pace; if I like, I can make it describe figures of eight, combined with circles; if I spin on my heels at the same time, I am ableto make the process still more complicated by compelling my sling totrace every known curve. That is what I shall do. 

On the 2nd of May 1880, I make a white mark on the thorax of tenMason-bees busied with various tasks: some are exploring the slabs ofclay in order to select a site; others are brick-laying; others aregarnering stores. When the mark is dry, I catch them and pack them as Ihave described. I first carry them a quarter of a mile in the oppositedirection to the one which I intend to take. A path skirting my housefavours this preliminary manoeuvre; I have every hope of being alonewhen the time comes to make play with my sling. There is a way-sidecross at the end; I stop at the foot of the cross. Here I swing my Beesin every direction. Now, while I am making the box describe inversecircles and loops, while I am pirouetting on my heels to achieve thevarious curves, up comes a woman from the village and stares at me. Oh, how she stares at me, what a look she gives me! At the foot of thecross! Acting in such a silly way! People talked about it. It was sheerwitchcraft. Had I not dug up a dead body, only a few days before? Yes, I had been to a prehistoric burial-place, I had taken from it a pair ofvenerable, well-developed tibias, a set of funerary vessels and a fewshoulders of horse, placed there as a viaticum for the great journey. Ihad done this thing; and people knew it. And now, to crown all, theman of evil reputation is found at the foot of a cross indulging inunhallowed antics. 

No matter--and it shows no small courage on my part--the gyrations areduly accomplished in the presence of this unexpected witness. ThenI retrace my steps and walk westward of Serignan. I take theleast-frequented paths, I cut across country so as, if possible, toavoid a second meeting. It would be the last straw if I were seenopening my paper bags and letting loose my insects! When half-way, tomake my experiment more decisive still, I repeat the rotation, in ascomplicated a fashion as before. I repeat it for the third time at thespot chosen for the release. 

I am at the end of a flint-strewn plain, with here and there a scantycurtain of almond-trees and holm-oaks. Walking at a good pace, Ihave taken thirty minutes to cover the ground in a straight line. Thedistance therefore is, roughly, two miles. It is a fine day, under aclear sky, with a very light breeze blowing from the north. I sit downon the ground, facing the south, so that the insects may be free to takeeither the direction of their nest or the opposite one. I let them looseat a quarter past two. When the bags are opened, the Bees, for the mostpart, circle several times around me and then dart off impetuously inthe direction of Serignan, as far as I can judge. It is not easy towatch them, because they fly off suddenly, after going two or threetimes round my body, a suspicious-looking object which they wish, apparently, to reconnoitre before starting. A quarter of an hour later, my eldest daughter, Antonia, who is on the look-out beside the nests, sees the first traveller arrive. On my return, in the course of theevening, two others come back. Total: three home on the same day, out often scattered abroad. 

I resume the experiment next morning. I mark ten Mason-bees with red, which will enable me to distinguish them from those who returned onthe day before and from those who may still return with the white spotuneffaced. The same precautions, the same rotations, the same localitiesas on the first occasion; only, I make no rotation on the way, confiningmyself to swinging my box round on leaving and on arriving. The insectsare released at a quarter past eleven. I preferred the forenoon, as thiswas the busiest time at the works. One Bee was seen by Antonia to beback at the nest by twenty minutes past eleven. Supposing her to be thefirst let loose, it took her just five minutes to cover the distance. But there is nothing to tell me that it is not another, in which caseshe needed less. It is the fastest speed that I have succeeded innoting. I myself am back at twelve and, within a short time, catch threeothers. I see no more during the rest of the evening. Total: four home, out of ten. 

The 4th of May is a very bright, calm, warm day, weather highlypropitious for my experiments. I take fifty Chalicodomae marked withblue. The distance to be travelled remains the same. I make the firstrotation after carrying my insects a few hundred steps in the directionopposite to that which I finally take; in addition, three rotations onthe road; a fifth rotation at the place where they are set free. Ifthey do not lose their bearings this time, it will not be for lackof twisting and turning. I begin to open my screws of paper at twentyminutes past nine. It is rather early, for which reason my Bees, onrecovering their liberty, remain for a moment undecided and lazy; but, after a short sunbath on a stone where I place them, they take wing. Iam sitting on the ground, facing the south, with Serignan on my leftand Piolenc on my right. When the flight is not too swift to allow me toperceive the direction taken, I see my released captives disappear to myleft. A few, but only a few, go south; two or three go west, or to rightof me. I do not speak of the north, against which I act as a screen. Alltold, the great majority take the left, that is to say, the directionof the nest. The last is released at twenty minutes to ten. One of thefifty travellers has lost her mark in the paper bag. I deduct her fromthe total, leaving forty-nine. 

According to Antonia, who watches the home-coming, the earliest arrivalsappeared at twenty-five minutes to ten, say fifteen minutes after thefirst was set free. By twelve o'clock mid-day, there are eleven back;and, by four o'clock in the evening, seventeen. That ends the census. Total: seventeen, out of forty-nine. 

I resolved upon a fourth experiment, on the 14th of May. The weatheris glorious, with a light northerly breeze. I take twenty Mason-bees, marked in pink, at eight o'clock in the morning. Rotations at the start, after a preliminary backing in a direction opposite to that which Iintend to take; two rotations on the road; a fourth on arriving. Allthose whose flight I am able to follow with my eyes turn to my left, that is to say, towards Serignan. Yet I had taken care to leave thechoice free between the two opposite directions: in particular, I hadsent away my Dog, who was on my right. To-day, the Bees do not circleround me: some fly away at once; the others, the greater number, feelinggiddy perhaps after the pitching of the journey and the rolling of thesling, alight on the ground a few yards away, seem to wait until theyare somewhat recovered and then fly off to the left. I perceived this tobe the general flight, whenever I was able to observe at all. I was backat a quarter to ten. Two Bees with pink marks were there before me, of whom one was engaged in building, with her pellet of mortar in hermandibles. By one o'clock in the afternoon there were seven arrivals; Isaw no more during the rest of the day. Total: seven out of twenty. 

Let us be satisfied with this: the experiment has been repeated oftenenough, but it does not conclude as Darwin hoped, as I myself hoped, especially after what I had been told about the Cat. In vain, adoptingthe advice given, do I carry my insects first in the opposite directionto the place at which I intend to release them; in vain, when about toretrace my steps, do I twirl my sling with every complication in theway of whirls and twists that I am able to imagine; in vain, thinkingto increase the difficulties, do I repeat the rotation as often asfive times over: at the start, on the road, on arriving; it makes nodifference: the Mason-bees return; and the proportion of returns on thesame day fluctuates between thirty and forty per cent. It goes to myheart to abandon an idea suggested by so famous a man of science andcherished all the more readily inasmuch as I thought it likely toprovide a final solution. The facts are there, more eloquent than anynumber of ingenious views; and the problem remains as mysterious asever. 

In the following year, 1881, I began experimenting again, but in adifferent way. Hitherto, I had worked on the level. To return to thenest, my lost Bees had only to cross slight obstacles, the hedgesand spinneys of the tilled fields. To-day, I propose to add tothe difficulties of distance those of the ground to be traversed. Discontinuing all my backing- and whirling-tactics, things which Irecognize as useless, I think of releasing my Chalicodomae in the thickof the Serignan Woods. How will they escape from that labyrinth, where, in the early days, I needed a compass to find my way? Moreover, Ishall have an assistant with me, a pair of eyes younger than mine andbetter-fitted to follow my insects' first flight. That immediate startin the direction of the nest has already been repeated very often and isbeginning to interest me more than the return itself. A pharmaceuticalstudent, spending a few days with my parents, shall be my eyewitness. With him, I shall feel at ease; science and he are no strangers. 

The trip to the woods takes place on the 16th of May. The weather ishot and hints at a coming storm. There is a perceptible breeze fromthe south, but not enough to upset my travellers. Forty Mason-bees arecaught. To shorten the preparations, because of the distance, I donot mark them while they are on the nests; I shall mark them at thestarting-point, as I release them. It is the old method, prolific ofstings; but I prefer it to-day, in order to save time. It takes me anhour to reach the place. The distance, therefore, allowing for windings, is about three miles. 

The site selected must permit me to recognize the direction of theinsects' first flight. I choose a clearing in the middle of the copses. All around is a great expanse of dense woods, shutting out the horizonon every side; on the south, in the direction of the nests, a curtainof hills rises to a height of some three hundred feet above the spot atwhich I stand. The wind is not strong, but it is blowing in the oppositedirection to that which my insects will have to take in order toreach their home. I turn my back on Serignan, so that, when leavingmy fingers, the Bees, to return to the nest, will be obliged to flysideways, to right and left of me; I mark the insects and release themone by one. I begin operations at twenty minutes past ten. 

One half of the Bees seem rather indolent, flutter about for a while, drop to the ground, appear to recover their spirits and then start off. The other half show greater decision. Although the insects have to fightagainst the soft wind that is blowing from the south, they make straightfor the nest. All go south, after describing a few circles, a few loops, around us. There is no exception in the case of any of those whosedeparture we are able to follow. The fact is noted by myself and mycolleague beyond dispute or doubt. My Mason-bees head for the south asthough some compass told them which way the wind was blowing. 

I am back at twelve o'clock. None of the strays is at the nest; but, afew minutes later, I catch two. At two o'clock, the number has increasedto nine. But now the sky clouds over, the wind freshens and the storm isapproaching. We can no longer rely on any further arrivals. Total: nineout of forty, or twenty-two per cent. 

The proportion is smaller than in the former cases, when it variedbetween thirty and forty per cent. Must we attribute this result to thedifficulties to be overcome? Can the Mason-bees have lost their way inthe maze of the forest? It is safer not to give an opinion: other causesintervened which may have decreased the number of those who returned. Imarked the insects at the starting-place; I handled them; and I am notprepared to say that they were all in the best of condition on leavingmy stung and smarting fingers. Besides, the sky has become overcast, astorm is imminent. In the month of May, so variable, so fickle, inmy part of the world, we can hardly ever count on a whole day of fineweather. A splendid morning is swiftly followed by a fitful afternoon;and my experiments with Mason-bees have often suffered by thesevariations. All things considered, I am inclined to think that thehomeward journey across the forest and the mountain is effected just asreadily as across the corn-fields and the plain. 

I have one last resource left whereby to try and put my Bees out oftheir latitude. I will first take them to a great distance; then, describing a wide curve, I will return by another road and release mycaptives when I am near enough to the village, say, about two miles. Aconveyance is necessary, this time. My collaborator of the day in thewoods offers me the use of his gig. The two of us set off, with fifteenMason-bees, along the road to Orange, until we come to the viaduct. Here, on the right, is the straight ribbon of the old Roman road, theVia Domitia. We take it, driving north towards the Uchaux Mountains, the classic home of superb Turonian fossils. We next turn back towardsSerignan, by the Piolenc Road. A halt is made by the stretch of countryknown as Font-Claire, the distance from which to the village is aboutone mile and five furlongs. The reader can easily follow my route on theordnance-survey map; and he will see that the loop described measuresnot far short of five miles and a half. 

At the same time, Favier came and joined me at Font-Claire, by thedirect road, the one that runs through Piolenc. He brought with himfifteen Mason-bees, intended for purposes of comparison with mine. I amtherefore in possession of two sets of insects. Fifteen, marked in pink, have taken the five-mile bend; fifteen, marked in blue, have come by thestraight road, the shortest road for returning to the nest. The weatheris warm, exceedingly bright and very calm; I could not hope for a betterday for my experiment. The insects are given their freedom at mid-day. 

At five o'clock, the arrivals number seven of the pink Mason-bees, whomI thought that I had bewildered by a long and circuitous drive, and sixof the blue Mason-bees, who came to Font-Claire by the direct route. Thetwo proportions, forty-six and forty per cent. , are almost equal; andthe slight excess in favour of the insects that went the roundaboutway is evidently an accidental result which we need not take intoconsideration. The bend described cannot have helped them to find theirway home; but it has also certainly not hampered them. 

There is no need of further proof. The intricate movements of a rotationsuch as I have described; the obstacle of hills and woods; the pitfallsof a road which moves on, moves back and returns after making a widecircuit: none of these is able to disconcert the Chalicodomae or preventthem from going back to the nest. 

I had written to Charles Darwin telling him of my first, negativeresults, those obtained by swinging the Bees in a box. He expecteda success and was much surprised at the failure. Had he had time toexperiment with his Pigeons, they would have behaved just like my Bees;the preliminary twirling would not have affected them. The problemcalled for another method; and what he proposed was this:

'To place the insect within an induction coil, so as to disturb anymagnetic or diamagnetic sensibility which it seems just possible thatthey may possess. '

To treat an insect as you would a magnetic needle and to subject it tothe current from an induction coil in order to disturb its magnetism ordiamagnetism appeared to me, I must confess, a curious notion, worthyof an imagination in the last ditch. I have but little confidence in ourphysics, when they pretend to explain life; nevertheless, my respect forthe great man would have made me resort to the induction-coils, if I hadpossessed the necessary apparatus. But my village boasts no scientificresources: if I want an electric spark, I am reduced to rubbing a sheetof paper on my knees. My physics cupboard contains a magnet; and that isabout all. When this penury was realised, another method was suggested, simpler than the first and more certain in its results, as Darwinhimself considered:

'To make a very thin needle into a magnet; then breaking it into veryshort pieces, which would still be magnetic, and fastening one of thesepieces with some cement on the thorax of the insects to be experimentedon. I believe that such a little magnet, from its close proximity tothe nervous system of the insect, would affect it more than would theterrestrial currents. '

There is still the same idea of turning the insect into a sort of barmagnet. The terrestrial currents guide it when returning to the nest. Itbecomes a living compass which, withdrawn from the action of the earthby the proximity of a loadstone, loses its sense of direction. With atiny magnet fastened on its thorax, parallel with the nervous systemand more powerful than the terrestrial magnetism by reason of itscomparative nearness, the insect will lose its bearings. Naturally, insetting down these lines, I take shelter behind the mighty reputationof the learned begetter of the idea. It would not be accepted as seriouscoming from a humble person like myself. Obscurity cannot afford theseaudacious theories. 

The experiment seems easy; it is not beyond the means at my disposal. Let us attempt it. I magnetise a very fine needle by rubbing it with mybar magnet; I retain only the slenderest part, the point, some five orsix millimetres long. (. 2 to. 23 inch. --Translator's Note. ) This brokenpiece is a perfect magnet: it attracts and repels another magnetisedneedle hanging from a thread. I am a little puzzled as to the best wayto fasten it on the insect's thorax. My assistant of the moment, the pharmaceutical student, requisitions all the adhesives in hislaboratory. The best is a sort of cerecloth which he prepares speciallywith a very fine material. It possesses the advantage that it can besoftened at the bowl of one's pipe when the time comes to operate out ofdoors. 

I cut out of this cerecloth a small square the size of the Bee's thorax;and I insert the magnetised point through a few threads of the material. All that we now have to do is to soften the gum a little and then dabthe thing at once on the Mason-bee's back, so that the broken needleruns parallel with the spine. Other engines of the same kind areprepared and due note taken of their poles, so as to enable me to pointthe south pole at the insect's head in some cases and at the oppositeend in others. 

My assistant and I begin by rehearsing the performance; we must have alittle practice before trying the experiment away from home. Besides, Iwant to see how the insect will behave in its magnetic harness. I take aMason-bee at work in her cell, which I mark. I carry her to my study, at the other end of the house. The magnetised outfit is fastened on thethorax; and the insect is let go. The moment she is free, the Bee dropsto the ground and rolls about, like a mad thing, on the floor of theroom. She resumes her flight, flops down again, turns over on her side, on her back, knocks against the things in her way, buzzes noisily, flings herself about desperately and ends by darting through the openwindow in headlong flight. 

What does it all mean? The magnet appears to have a curious effect on mypatient's system! What a fuss she makes! How terrified she is! The Beeseemed utterly distraught at losing her bearings under the influence ofmy knavish tricks. Let us go to the nests and see what happens. We havenot long to wait: my insect returns, but rid of its magnetic tackle. Irecognize it by the traces of gum that still cling to the hair of thethorax. It goes back to its cell and resumes its labours. 

Always on my guard when searching the unknown, unwilling to drawconclusions before weighing the arguments for and against, I feel doubtcreeping in upon me with regard to what I have seen. Was it reallythe magnetic influence that disturbed my Bee so strangely? When shestruggled and kicked on the floor, fighting wildly with both legs andwings, when she fled in terror, was she under the sway of the magnetfastened on her back? Can my appliance have thwarted the guidinginfluence of the terrestrial currents on her nervous system? Or was herdistress merely the result of an unwonted harness? This is what remainsto be seen and that without delay. 

I construct a new apparatus, but provide it with a short straw in placeof the magnet. The insect carrying it on its back rolls on the ground, kicks and flings herself about like the first, until the irksomecontrivance is removed, taking with it a part of the fur on the thorax. The straw produces the same effects as the magnet, in other words, magnetism had nothing to do with what happened. My invention, in bothcases alike, is a cumbrous tackle of which the Bee tries to rid herselfat once by every possible means. To look to her for normal actions solong as she carries an apparatus, magnetized or not, upon her back isthe same as expecting to study the natural habits of a Dog after tying akettle to his tail. 

The experiment with the magnet is impracticable. What would it tell usif the insect consented to it? In my opinion, it would tell us nothing. In the matter of the homing instinct, a magnet would have no moreinfluence than a bit of straw. 

CHAPTER 5. THE STORY OF MY CATS. 

If this swinging-process fails entirely when its object is to make theinsect lose its bearings, what influence can it have upon the Cat? Isthe method of whirling the animal round in a bag, to prevent its return, worthy of confidence? I believed in it at first, so close-allied was itto the hopeful idea suggested by the great Darwin. But my faith is nowshaken: my experience with the insect makes me doubtful of the Cat. Ifthe former returns after being whirled, why should not the latter? Itherefore embark upon fresh experiments. 

And, first of all, to what extent does the Cat deserve his reputation ofbeing able to return to the beloved home, to the scenes of his amorousexploits on the tiles and in the hay-lofts? The most curious facts aretold of his instinct; children's books on natural history abound withfeats that do the greatest credit to his prowess as a pilgrim. I donot attach much importance to these stories: they come from casualobservers, uncritical folk given to exaggeration. It is not everybodywho can talk about animals correctly. When some one not of the craftgets on the subject and says to me, 'Such or such an animal is black, ' Ibegin by finding out if it does not happen to be white; and many a timethe truth is discovered in the converse proposition. Men come to me andsing the praises of the Cat as a travelling-expert. Well and good: wewill now look upon the Cat as a poor traveller. And that would be theextent of my knowledge if I had only the evidence of books and of peopleunaccustomed to the scruples of scientific examination. Fortunately, I am acquainted with a few incidents that will stand the test of myincredulity. The Cat really deserves his reputation as a discerningpilgrim. Let us relate these incidents. 

One day--it was at Avignon--there appeared upon the garden-wall awretched-looking Cat, with matted coat and protruding ribs, so thinthat his back was a mere jagged ridge. He was mewing with hunger. Mychildren, at that time very young, took pity on his misery. Breadsoaked in milk was offered him at the end of a reed. He took it. And themouthfuls succeeded one another to such good purpose that he wassated and went off, heedless of the 'Puss! Puss!' of his compassionatefriends. Hunger returned; and the starveling reappeared in his wall-toprefectory. He received the same fare of bread soaked in milk, the samesoft words. He allowed himself to be tempted. He came down from thewall. The children were able to stroke his back. Goodness, how thin hewas!

It was the great topic of conversation. We discussed it at table: wewould tame the vagabond, we would keep him, we would make him a bedof hay. It was a most important matter: I can see to this day, I shallalways see the council of rattleheads deliberating on the Cat's fate. They were not satisfied until the savage animal remained. Soon he grewinto a magnificent Tom. His large round head, his muscular legs, hisreddish fur, flecked with darker patches, reminded one of a littlejaguar. He was christened Ginger because of his tawny hue. A mate joinedhim later, picked up in almost similar circumstances. Such was theorigin of my series of Gingers, which I have retained for little shortof twenty years through the vicissitudes of my various removals. 

The first of these removals took place in 1870. A little earlier, aminister who has left a lasting memory in the University, that fineman, Victor Duruy (Jean Victor Duruy (1811-1894), author of a numberof historical works, including a well-known "Histoire des Romains", andminister of public instruction under Napoleon III. From 1863 to 1869. Cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapter 20. --Translator's Note. ), hadinstituted classes for the secondary education of girls. This was thebeginning, as far as was then possible, of the burning question ofto-day. I very gladly lent my humble aid to this labour of light. Iwas put to teach physical and natural science. I had faith and was notsparing of work, with the result that I rarely faced a more attentive orinterested audience. The days on which the lessons fell were red-letterdays, especially when the lesson was botany and the table disappearedfrom view under the treasures of the neighbouring conservatories. 

That was going too far. In fact, you can see how heinous my crime was: Itaught those young persons what air and water are; whence the lightningcomes and the thunder; by what device our thoughts are transmittedacross the seas and continents by means of a metal wire; why fireburns and why we breathe; how a seed puts forth shoots and how a flowerblossoms: all eminently hateful things in the eyes of some people, whosefeeble eyes are dazzled by the light of day. 

The little lamp must be put out as quickly as possible and measurestaken to get rid of the officious person who strove to keep it alight. The scheme was darkly plotted with the old maids who owned my house andwho saw the abomination of desolation in these new educational methods. I had no written agreement to protect me. The bailiff appeared with anotice on stamped paper. It baldly informed that I must move out withinfour weeks from date, failing which the law would turn my goods andchattels into the street. I had hurriedly to provide myself with adwelling. The first house which we found happened to be at Orange. Thuswas my exodus from Avignon effected. 

We were somewhat anxious about the moving of the Cats. We were all of usattached to them and should have thought it nothing short of criminal toabandon the poor creatures, whom we had so often petted, to distressand probably to thoughtless persecution. The shes and the kittens wouldtravel without any trouble: all you have to do is to put them in abasket; they will keep quiet on the journey. But the old Tom-cats werea serious problem. I had two: the head of the family, the patriarch; andone of his descendants, quite as strong as himself. We decided totake the grandsire, if he consented to come, and to leave the grandsonbehind, after finding him a home. 

My friend Dr. Loriol offered to take charge of the forsaken one. Theanimal was carried to him at nightfall in a closed hamper. Hardlywere we seated at the evening-meal, talking of the good fortune ofour Tom-cat, when we saw a dripping mass jump through the window. Theshapeless bundle came and rubbed itself against our legs, purring withhappiness. It was the Cat. 

I learnt his story next day. On arriving at Dr. Loriol's, he was lockedup in a bedroom. The moment he saw himself a prisoner in the unfamiliarroom, he began to jump about wildly on the furniture, against thewindow-panes, among the ornaments on the mantelpiece, threatening tomake short work of everything. Mme. Loriol was frightened by the littlelunatic; she hastened to open the window; and the Cat leapt out amongthe passers-by. A few minutes later, he was back at home. And it was noeasy matter: he had to cross the town almost from end to end; he hadto make his way through a long labyrinth of crowded streets, amid athousand dangers, including first boys and next dogs; lastly--and thisperhaps was an even more serious obstacle--he had to pass over theSorgue, a river running through Avignon. There were bridges at hand, many, in fact; but the animal, taking the shortest cut, had used none ofthem, bravely jumping into the water, as its streaming fur showed. Ihad pity on the poor Cat, so faithful to his home. We agreed to do ourutmost to take him with us. We were spared the worry: a few days later, he was found lying stiff and stark under a shrub in the garden. Theplucky animal had fallen a victim to some stupid act of spite. Some onehad poisoned him for me. Who? It is not likely that it was a friend!

There remained the old Cat. He was not indoors when we started; hewas prowling round the hay-lofts of the neighbourhood. The carrier waspromised an extra ten francs if he brought the Cat to Orange with one ofthe loads which he had still to convey. On his last journey he broughthim stowed away under the driver's seat. I scarcely knew my old Tom whenwe opened the moving prison in which he had been confined since theday before. He came out looking a most alarming beast, scratching andspitting, with bristling hair, bloodshot eyes, lips white with foam. Ithought him mad and watched him closely for a time. I was wrong: it wasmerely the fright of a bewildered animal. Had there been trouble withthe carrier when he was caught? Did he have a bad time on the journey?History is silent on both points. What I do know is that the very natureof the Cat seemed changed: there was no more friendly purring, no morerubbing against our legs; nothing but a wild expression and the deepestgloom. Kind treatment could not soothe him. For a few weeks longer, hedragged his wretched existence from corner to corner; then, one day, Ifound him lying dead in the ashes on the hearth. Grief, with the help ofold age, had killed him. Would he have gone back to Avignon, had he hadthe strength? I would not venture to affirm it. But, at least, I thinkit very remarkable that an animal should let itself die of home-sicknessbecause the infirmities of age prevent it from returning to its oldhaunts. 

What the patriarch could not attempt, we shall see another do, over amuch shorter distance, I admit. A fresh move is resolved upon, thatI may have, at length, the peace and quiet essential to my work. Thistime, I hope that it will be the last. I leave Orange for Serignan. 

The family of Gingers has been renewed: the old ones have passed away, new ones have come, including a full-grown Tom, worthy in all respectsof his ancestors. He alone will give us some difficulty; the others, thebabies and the mothers, can be removed without trouble. We put them intobaskets. The Tom has one to himself, so that the peace may be kept. Thejourney is made by carriage, in company with my family. Nothing strikinghappens before our arrival. Released from their hampers, the femalesinspect the new home, explore the rooms one by one; with their pinknoses they recognize the furniture: they find their own seats, their owntables, their own arm-chairs; but the surroundings are different. Theygive little surprised miaows and questioning glances. A few caresses anda saucer of milk allay all their apprehensions; and, by the next day, the mother Cats are acclimatised. 

It is a different matter with the Tom. We house him in the attics, wherehe will find ample room for his capers; we keep him company, to relievethe weariness of captivity; we take him a double portion of plates tolick; from time to time, we place him in touch with some of his family, to show him that he is not alone in the house; we pay him a host ofattentions, in the hope of making him forget Orange. He appears, infact, to forget it: he is gentle under the hand that pets him, he comeswhen called, purrs, arches his back. It is well: a week of seclusion andkindly treatment have banished all notions of returning. Let us give himhis liberty. He goes down to the kitchen, stands by the table like theothers, goes out into the garden, under the watchful eye of Aglae, whodoes not lose sight of him; he prowls all around with the most innocentair. He comes back. Victory! The Tom-cat will not run away. 

Next morning:

'Puss! Puss!'

Not a sign of him! We hunt, we call. Nothing. Oh, the hypocrite, thehypocrite! How he has tricked us! He has gone, he is at Orange. Noneof those about me can believe in this venturesome pilgrimage. I declarethat the deserter is at this moment at Orange mewing outside the emptyhouse. 

Aglae and Claire went to Orange. They found the Cat, as I said theywould, and brought him back in a hamper. His paws and belly were coveredwith red clay; and yet the weather was dry, there was no mud. The Cat, therefore, must have got wet crossing the Aygues torrent; and the moistfur had kept the red earth of the fields through which he passed. Thedistance from Serignan to Orange, in a straight line, is four and a halfmiles. There are two bridges over the Aygues, one above and one belowthat line, some distance away. The Cat took neither the one nor theother: his instinct told him the shortest road and he followed thatroad, as his belly, covered with red mud, proved. He crossed the torrentin May, at a time when the rivers run high; he overcame his repugnanceto water in order to return to his beloved home. The Avignon Tom did thesame when crossing the Sorgue. 

The deserter was reinstated in his attic at Serignan. He stayed therefor a fortnight; and at last we let him out. Twenty-four hours hadnot elapsed before he was back at Orange. We had to abandon him to hisunhappy fate. A neighbour living out in the country, near my formerhouse, told me that he saw him one day hiding behind a hedge with arabbit in his mouth. Once no longer provided with food, he, accustomedto all the sweets of a Cat's existence, turned poacher, taking toll ofthe farm-yards round about my old home. I heard no more of him. He cameto a bad end, no doubt: he had become a robber and must have met with arobber's fate. 

The experiment has been made and here is the conclusion, twice proved. Full-grown Cats can find their way home, in spite of the distance andtheir complete ignorance of the intervening ground. They have, in theirown fashion, the instinct of my Mason-bees. A second point remains to becleared up, that of the swinging motion in the bag. Are they thrown outof their latitude by this stratagem, are or they not? I was thinkingof making some experiments, when more precise information arrived andtaught me that it was not necessary. The first who acquainted me withthe method of the revolving bag was telling the story told him by asecond person, who repeated the story of a third, a story related on theauthority of a fourth; and so on. None had tried it, none had seen itfor himself. It is a tradition of the country-side. One and all extolit as an infallible method, without, for the most part, having attemptedit. And the reason which they give for its success is, in their eyes, conclusive. If, say they, we ourselves are blind-folded and then spinround for a few seconds, we no longer know where we are. Even so withthe Cat carried off in the darkness of the swinging bag. They argue fromman to the animal, just as others argue from the animal to man: a faultymethod in either case, if there really be two distinct psychic worlds. 

The belief would not be so deep-rooted in the peasant's mind, if factshad not from time to time confirmed it. But we may assume that, insuccessful cases, the Cats made to lose their bearings were young andunemancipated animals. With those neophytes, a drop of milk is enoughto dispel the grief of exile. They do not return home, whether they havebeen whirled in a bag or not. People have thought it as well to subjectthem to the whirling operation by way of an additional precaution; andthe method has received the credit of a success that has nothing to dowith it. In order to test the method properly, it should have been triedon a full-grown Cat, a genuine Tom. 

I did in the end get the evidence which I wanted on this point. Intelligent and trustworthy people, not given to jumping to conclusions, have told me that they have tried the trick of the swinging bag to keepCats from returning to their homes. None of them succeeded when theanimal was full-grown. Though carried to a great distance, into anotherhouse, and subjected to a conscientious series of revolutions, the Catalways came back. I have in mind more particularly a destroyer of theGoldfish in a fountain, who, when transported from Serignan to Piolenc, according to the time-honoured method, returned to his fish; who, whencarried into the mountain and left in the woods, returned once more. Thebag and the swinging round proved of no avail; and the miscreant had tobe put to death. I have verified a fair number of similar instances, all under most favourable conditions. The evidence is unanimous: therevolving motion never keeps the adult Cat from returning home. Thepopular belief, which I found so seductive at first, is a countryprejudice, based upon imperfect observation. We must, therefore, abandonDarwin's idea when trying to explain the homing of the Cat as well as ofthe Mason-bee. 

CHAPTER 6. THE RED ANTS. 

The Pigeon transported for hundreds of miles is able to find his wayback to his Dove-cot; the Swallow, returning from his winter quarters inAfrica, crosses the sea and once more takes possession of the old nest. What guides them on these long journeys? Is it sight? An observerof supreme intelligence, one who, though surpassed by others in theknowledge of the stuffed animal under a glass case, is almost unrivalledin his knowledge of the live animal in its wild state, Toussenel(Alphonse Toussenel (1803-1885), the author of a number of interestingand valuable works on ornithology. --Translator's Note. ), the admirablewriter of "L'Esprit des betes", speaks of sight and meteorology as theCarrier-pigeon's guides:

'The French bird, ' he says, 'knows by experience that the cold weathercomes from the north, the hot from the south, the dry from the east andthe wet from the west. That is enough meteorological knowledge to tellhim the cardinal points and to direct his flight. The Pigeon taken ina closed basket from Brussels to Toulouse has certainly no means ofreading the map of the route with his eyes; but no one can prevent himfrom feeling, by the warmth of the atmosphere, that he is pursuing theroad to the south. When restored to liberty at Toulouse, he alreadyknows that the direction which he must follow to regain his Dove-cotis the direction of the north. Therefore he wings straight in thatdirection and does not stop until he nears those latitudes where themean temperature is that of the zone which he inhabits. If he does notfind his home at the first onset, it is because he has borne a littletoo much to the right or to the left. In any case, it takes him but afew hours' search in an easterly or westerly direction to correct hismistake. '

The explanation is a tempting one when the journey is taken north andsouth; but it does not apply to a journey east and west, on the sameisothermal line. Besides, it has this defect, that it does not admit ofgeneralization. One cannot talk of sight and still less of the influenceof a change of climate when a Cat returns home, from one end of a townto the other, threading his way through a labyrinth of streets andalleys which he sees for the first time. Nor is it sight that guides myMason-bees, especially when they are let loose in the thick of a wood. Their low flight, eight or nine feet above the ground, does not allowthem to take a panoramic view nor to gather the lie of the land. Whatneed have they of topography? Their hesitation is short-lived: afterdescribing a few narrow circles around the experimenter, they start inthe direction of the nest, despite the cover of the forest, despite thescreen of a tall chain of hills which they cross by mounting theslope at no great height from the ground. Sight enables them to avoidobstacles, without giving them a general idea of their road. Nor hasmeteorology aught to do with the case: the climate has not varied inthose few miles of transit. My Mason-bees have not learnt from anyexperience of heat, cold, dryness and damp: an existence of a few weeks'duration does not allow of this. And, even if they knew all about thefour cardinal points, there is no difference in climate between the spotwhere their nest lies and the spot at which they are released; so thatdoes not help them to settle the direction in which they are to travel. 

To explain these many mysteries, we are driven therefore to appeal toyet another mystery, that is to say, a special sense denied to mankind. Charles Darwin, whose weighty authority no one will gainsay, arrivesat the same conclusion. To ask if the animal be not impressed by theterrestrial currents, to enquire if it be not influenced by the closeproximity of a magnetic needle: what is this but the recognition ofa magnetic sense? Do we possess a similar faculty? I am speaking, ofcourse, of the magnetism of the physicists and not of the magnetism ofthe Mesmers and Cagliostros. Assuredly we possess nothing remotely likeit. What need would the mariner have of a compass, were he himself acompass?

And this is what the great scientist acknowledges: a special sense, soforeign to our organism that we are not able to form a conception ofit, guides the Pigeon, the Swallow, the Cat, the Mason-bee and a host ofothers when away from home. Whether this sense be magnetic or no I willnot take upon myself to decide; I am content to have helped, in no smalldegree, to establish its existence. A new sense added to our number:what an acquisition, what a source of progress! Why are we deprivedof it? It would have been a fine weapon and of great service in thestruggle for life. If, as is contended, the whole of the animal kingdom, including man, is derived from a single mould, the original cell, andbecomes self-evolved in the course of time, favouring the best-endowedand leaving the less well-endowed to perish, how comes it that thiswonderful sense is the portion of a humble few and that it has left notrace in man, the culminating achievement of the zoological progression?Our precursors were very ill-advised to let so magnificent aninheritance go: it was better worth keeping than a vertebra of thecoccyx or a hair of the moustache. 

Does not the fact that this sense has not been handed down to uspoint to a flaw in the pedigree? I submit the little problem to theevolutionists; and I should much like to know what their protoplasm andtheir nucleus have to say to it. 

Is this unknown sense localized in a particular part of the Wasp and theBee? Is it exercised by means of a special organ? We immediately thinkof the antennae. The antennae are what we always fall back upon when theinsect's actions are not quite clear to us; we gladly put down to themwhatever is most necessary to our arguments. For that matter, I hadplenty of fairly good reasons for suspecting them of containing thesense of direction. When the Hairy Ammophila (A Sand-wasp who hunts theGrey Worm, or Caterpillar of the Turnip-moth, to serve as food for hergrubs. For other varieties of the Ammophila, cf. "Insect Life": chapter15. --Translator's Note. ) is searching for the Grey Worm, it is with herantennae, those tiny fingers continually fumbling at the soil, that sheseems to recognize the presence of the underground prey. Could not thoseinquisitive filaments, which seem to guide the insect when hunting, alsoguide it when travelling? This remained to be seen; and I did see. 

I took some Mason-bees and amputated their antennae with the scissors, as closely as I could. These maimed ones were then carried to a distanceand released. They returned to the nest with as little difficulty asthe others. I once experimented in the same way with the largest of ourCerceres (Cerceris tuberculata) (Another Hunting Wasp, who feeds heryoung on Weevils. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 4 and 5. --Translator'sNote. ); and the Weevil-huntress returned to her galleries. This ridsus of one hypothesis: the sense of direction is not exercised by theantennae. Then where is its seat? I do not know. 

What I do know is that the Mason-bees without antennae, though they goback to the cells, do not resume work. They persist in flying in frontof their masonry, they alight on the clay cup, they perch on the rim ofthe cell and there, seemingly pensive and forlorn, stand for a long timecontemplating the work which will never be finished; they go off, theycome back, they drive away any importunate neighbour, but they fetchand carry no more honey or mortar. The next day, they do not appear. Deprived of her tools, the worker loses all heart in her task. When theMason-bee is building, the antennae are constantly feeling, fumbling andexploring, superintending, as it were, the finishing touches given tothe work. They are her instruments of precision; they represent thebuilder's compasses, square, level and plumb-line. 

Hitherto my experiments have been confined to the females, who are muchmore faithful to the nest by virtue of their maternal responsibilities. What would the males do if they were taken from home? I have no greatconfidence in these swains who, for a few days, form a tumultuous throngoutside the nests, wait for the females to emerge, quarrel for theirpossession, amid endless brawls, and then disappear when the works arein full swing. What care they, I ask myself, about returning to thenatal nest rather than settling elsewhere, provided that they find somerecipient for their amatory declarations? I was mistaken: the males doreturn to the nest. It is true that, in view of their lack of strength, I did not subject them to a long journey: about half a mile or so. Nevertheless, this represented to them a distant expedition, an unknowncountry; for I do not see them go on long excursions. By day, they visitthe nests or the flowers in the garden; at night, they take refugein the old galleries or in the interstices of the stone-heaps in theharmas. 

The same nests are frequented by two Osmia-bees (Osmia tricornis andOsmia Latreillii), who build their cells in the galleries left attheir disposal by the Chalicodomae. The most numerous is the first, theThree-horned Osmia. It was a splendid opportunity to try and discoverto what extent the sense of direction may be regarded as general inthe Bees and Wasps; and I took advantage of it. Well, the Osmiae (Osmiatricornis), both male and female, can find their way back to the nest. My experiments were made very quickly, with small numbers and over shortdistances; but the results agreed so closely with the others that Iwas convinced. All told, the return to the nest, including my earlierattempts, was verified in the case of four species: the Chalicodoma ofthe Sheds, the Chalicodoma of the Walls, the Three-horned Osmia and theGreat or Warted Cerceris (Cerceris tuberculata). ("Insect Life": chapter19. --Translator's Note. ) Shall I generalize without reserve and allowall the Hymenoptera (The Hymenoptera are an order of insects havingfour membranous wings and include the Bees, Wasps, Ants, Saw-flies andIchneumon-flies. --Translator's Note. ) this faculty of finding theirway in unknown country? I shall do nothing of the kind; for here, to myknowledge, is a contradictory and very significant result. 

Among the treasures of my harmas-laboratory, I place in the firstrank an Ant-hill of Polyergus rufescens, the celebrated Red Ant, theslave-hunting Amazon. Unable to rear her family, incapable of seekingher food, of taking it even when it is within her reach, she needsservants who feed her and undertake the duties of housekeeping. The RedAnts make a practice of stealing children to wait on the community. Theyransack the neighbouring Ant-hills, the home of a different species;they carry away nymphs, which soon attain maturity in the strange houseand become willing and industrious servants. 

When the hot weather of June and July sets in, I often see the Amazonsleave their barracks of an afternoon and start on an expedition. Thecolumn measures five or six yards in length. If nothing worthy ofattention be met upon the road, the ranks are fairly well maintained;but, at the first suspicion of an Ant-hill, the vanguard halts anddeploys in a swarming throng, which is increased by the others as theycome up hurriedly. Scouts are sent out; the Amazons recognize that theyare on a wrong track; and the column forms again. It resumes its march, crosses the garden-paths, disappears from sight in the grass, reappearsfarther on, threads its way through the heaps of dead leaves, comesout again and continues its search. At last, a nest of Black Ants isdiscovered. The Red Ants hasten down to the dormitories where the nymphslie and soon emerge with their booty. Then we have, at the gates of theunderground city, a bewildering scrimmage between the defendingblacks and the attacking reds. The struggle is too unequal to remainindecisive. Victory falls to the reds, who race back to their abode, each with her prize, a swaddled nymph, dangling from her mandibles. Thereader who is not acquainted with these slave-raiding habits would begreatly interested in the story of the Amazons. I relinquish it, withmuch regret: it would take us too far from our subject, namely, thereturn to the nest. 

The distance covered by the nymph-stealing column varies: it all dependson whether Black Ants are plentiful in the neighbourhood. At times, ten or twenty yards suffice; at others, it requires fifty, a hundred ormore. I once saw the expedition go beyond the garden. The Amazonsscaled the surrounding wall, which was thirteen feet high at that point, climbed over it and went on a little farther, into a cornfield. Asfor the route taken, this is a matter of indifference to the marchingcolumn. Bare ground, thick grass, a heap of dead leaves or stones, brickwork, a clump of shrubs: all are crossed without any markedpreference for one sort of road rather than another. 

What is rigidly fixed is the path home, which follows the outward trackin all its windings and all its crossings, however difficult. Laden withtheir plunder, the Red Ants return to the nest by the same road, oftenan exceedingly complicated one, which the exigencies of the chasecompelled them to take originally. They repass each spot which theypassed at first; and this is to them a matter of such imperativenecessity that no additional fatigue nor even the gravest danger canmake them alter the track. 

Let us suppose that they have crossed a thick heap of dead leaves, representing to them a path beset with yawning gulfs, where every momentsome one falls, where many are exhausted as they struggle out of thehollows and reach the heights by means of swaying bridges, emerging atlast from the labyrinth of lanes. No matter: on their return, they willnot fail, though weighed down with their burden, once more to strugglethrough that weary maze. To avoid all this fatigue, they would have butto swerve slightly from the original path, for the good, smooth road isthere, hardly a step away. This little deviation never occurs to them. 

I came upon them one day when they were on one of their raids. Theywere marching along the inner edge of the stone-work of the garden-pond, where I have replaced the old batrachians by a colony of Gold-fish. The wind was blowing very hard from the north and, taking the columnin flank, sent whole rows of the Ants flying into the water. The fishhurried up; they watched the performance and gobbled up the drowninginsects. It was a difficult bit; and the column was decimated before ithad passed. I expected to see the return journey made by another road, which would wind round and avoid the fatal cliff. Not at all. Thenymph-laden band resumed the parlous path and the Goldfish received adouble windfall: the Ants and their prizes. Rather than alter its track, the column was decimated a second time. 

It is not easy to find the way home again after a distant expedition, during which there have been various sorties, nearly always by differentpaths; and this difficulty makes it absolutely necessary for the Amazonsto return by the same road by which they went. The insect has no choiceof route, if it would not be lost on the way: it must come back bythe track which it knows and which it has lately travelled. TheProcessionary Caterpillars, when they leave their nest and go to anotherbranch, on another tree, in search of a type of leaf more to theirtaste, carpet the course with silk and are able to return home byfollowing the threads stretched along their road. This is the mostelementary method open to the insect liable to stray on its excursions:a silken path brings it home again. The Processionaries, with theirunsophisticated traffic-laws, are very different from the Mason-bees andothers, who have a special sense to guide them. 

The Amazon, though belonging to the Hymenopteron clan, herself possessesrather limited homing-faculties, as witness her compulsory return by herformer trail. Can she imitate, to a certain extent, the Processionaries'method, that is to say, does she leave, along the road traversed, not aseries of conducting threads, for she is not equipped for that work, but some odorous emanation, for instance some formic scent, which wouldallow her to guide herself by means of the olfactory sense? This view ispretty generally accepted. The Ants, people say, are guided by thesense of smell; and this sense of smell appears to have its seat in theantennae, which we see in continual palpitation. It is doubtless veryreprehensible, but I must admit that the theory does not inspire me withoverwhelming enthusiasm. In the first place, I have my suspicions abouta sense of smell seated in the antennae: I have given my reasons before;and, next, I hope to prove by experiment that the Red Ants are notguided by a scent of any kind. 

To lie in wait for my Amazons, for whole afternoons on end, oftenunsuccessfully, meant taking up too much of my time. I engaged anassistant whose hours were not so much occupied as mine. It was mygrand-daughter Lucie, a little rogue who liked to hear my stories ofthe Ants. She had been present at the great battle between the reds andblacks and was much impressed by the rape of the long-clothes babies. Well-coached in her exalted functions, very proud of already servingthat august lady, Science, my little Lucie would wander about thegarden, when the weather seemed propitious, and keep an eye on the RedAnts, having been commissioned to reconnoitre carefully the road to thepillaged Ant-hill. She had given proof of her zeal; I could rely uponit. 

One day, while I was spinning out my daily quota of prose, there came abanging at my study-door:

'It's I, Lucie! Come quick: the reds have gone into the blacks' house. Come quick!'

'And do you know the road they took?'

'Yes, I marked it. '

'What! Marked it? How?'

'I did what Hop-o'-my-Thumb did: I scattered little white stones alongthe road. '

I hurried out. Things had happened as my six-year-old colleague said. Lucie had secured her provision of pebbles in advance and, on seeingthe Amazon regiment leave barracks, had followed them step by step andplaced her stones at intervals along the road covered. The Ants had madetheir raid and were beginning to return along the track of tell-talepebbles. The distance to the nest was about a hundred paces, which gaveme time to make preparations for an experiment previously contemplated. 

I take a big broom and sweep the track for about a yard across. Thedusty particles on the surface are thus removed and replaced by others. If they were tainted with any odorous effluvia, their absence willthrow the Ants off the track. I divide the road, in this way, at fourdifferent points, a few feet a part. 

The column arrives at the first section. The hesitation of the Ants isevident. Some recede and then return, only to recede once more; otherswander along the edge of the cutting; others disperse sideways and seemto be trying to skirt the unknown country. The head of the column, atfirst closed up to a width of a foot or so, now scatters to threeor four yards. But fresh arrivals gather in their numbers before theobstacle; they form a mighty array, an undecided horde. At last, a fewAnts venture into the swept zone and others follow, while a few havemeantime gone ahead and recovered the track by a circuitous route. Atthe other cuttings, there are the same halts, the same hesitations;nevertheless, they are crossed, either in a straight line or by goinground. In spite of my snares, the Ants manage to return to the nest; andthat by way of the little stones. 

The result of the experiment seems to argue in favour of the sense ofsmell. Four times over, there are manifest hesitations wherever theroad is swept. Though the return takes place, nevertheless, along theoriginal track, this may be due to the uneven work of the broom, whichhas left certain particles of the scented dust in position. The Antswho went round the cleared portion may have been guided by the sweepingsremoved to either side. Before, therefore, pronouncing judgment for oragainst the sense of smell, it were well to renew the experiment underbetter conditions and to remove everything containing a vestige ofscent. 

A few days later, when I have definitely decided on my plan, Lucieresumes her watch and soon comes to tell me of a sortie. I was countingon it, for the Amazons rarely miss an expedition during the hotand sultry afternoons of June and July, especially when the weatherthreatens storm. Hop-o'-my-Thumb's pebbles once more mark out the road, on which I choose the point best-suited to my schemes. 

A garden-hose is fixed to one of the feeders of the pond; the sluice isopened; and the Ants' path is cut by a continuous torrent, two or threefeet wide and of unlimited length. The sheet of water flows swiftly andplentifully at first, so as to wash the ground well and remove anythingthat may possess a scent. This thorough washing lasts for nearly aquarter of an hour. Then, when the Ants draw near, returning from theplunder, I let the water flow more slowly and reduce its depth, so asnot to overtax the strength of the insects. Now we have an obstaclewhich the Amazons must surmount, if it is absolutely necessary for themto follow the first trail. 

This time, the hesitation lasts long and the stragglers have time tocome up with the head of the column. Nevertheless, an attempt is made tocross the torrent by means of a few bits of gravel projecting above thewater; then, failing to find bottom, the more reckless of the Ants areswept off their feet and, without loosing hold of their prizes, driftaway, land on some shoal, regain the bank and renew their search fora ford. A few straws borne on the waters stop and become so many shakybridges on which the Ants climb. Dry olive-leaves are converted intorafts, each with its load of passengers. The more venturesome, partly bytheir own efforts, partly by good luck, reach the opposite bank withoutadventitious aid. I see some who, dragged by the current to one or theother bank, two or three yards off, seem very much concerned as to whatthey shall do next. Amid this disorder, amid the dangers of drowning, not one lets go her booty. She would not dream of doing so: death soonerthan that! In a word, the torrent is crossed somehow or other along theregular track. 

The scent of the road cannot be the cause of this, it seems to me, forthe torrent not only washed the ground some time beforehand but alsopours fresh water on it all the time that the crossing is taking place. Let us now see what will happen when the formic scent, if there reallybe one on the trail, is replaced by another, much stronger odour, oneperceptible to our own sense of smell, which the first is not, at leastnot under present conditions. 

I wait for a third sortie and, at one point in the road taken by theAnts, rub the ground with some handfuls of freshly gathered mint. Icover the track, a little farther on, with the leaves of the same plant. The Ants, on their return, cross the section over which the mint wasrubbed without apparently giving it a thought; they hesitate in front ofthe section heaped up with leaves and then go straight on. 

After these two experiments, first with the torrent of water whichwashes away all traces of smell from the ground and then with the mintwhich changes the smell, I think that we are no longer at liberty toquote scent as the guide of the Ants that return to the nest by the roadwhich they took at starting. Further tests will tell us more about it. 

Without interfering with the soil, I now lay across the track some largesheets of paper, newspapers, keeping them in position with a few smallstones. In front of this carpet, which completely alters the appearanceof the road, without removing any sort of scent that it may possess, theAnts hesitate even longer than before any of my other snares, including the torrent. They are compelled to make manifold attempts, reconnaissances to right and left, forward movements and repeatedretreats, before venturing altogether into the unknown zone. The paperstraits are crossed at last and the march resumed as usual. 

Another ambush awaits the Amazons some distance farther on. I havedivided the track by a thin layer of yellow sand, the ground itselfbeing grey. This change of colour alone is enough for a moment todisconcert the Ants, who again hesitate in the same way, though notfor so long, as they did before the paper. Eventually, this obstacle isovercome like the others. 

As neither the stretch of sand nor the stretch of paper got rid of anyscented effluvia with which the trail may have been impregnated, itis patent that, as the Ants hesitated and stopped in the same way asbefore, they find their way not by sense of smell, but really and trulyby sense of sight; for, every time that I alter the appearance of thetrack in any way whatever--whether by my destructive broom, my streamingwater, my green mint, my paper carpet or my golden sand--the returningcolumn calls a halt, hesitates and attempts to account for the changesthat have taken place. Yes, it is sight, but a very dull sight, whosehorizon is altered by the shifting of a few bits of gravel. To thisshort sight, a strip of paper, a bed of mint-leaves, a layer of yellowsand, a stream of water, a furrow made by the broom, or even lessermodifications are enough to transform the landscape; and the regiment, eager to reach home as fast as it can with its loot, halts uneasily onbeholding this unfamiliar scenery. If the doubtful zones are at lengthpassed, it is due to the fact that fresh attempts are constantly beingmade to cross the doctored strips and that at last a few Antsrecognize well-known spots beyond them. The others, relying on theirclearer-sighted sisters, follow. 

Sight would not be enough, if the Amazon had not also at her service acorrect memory for places. The memory of an Ant! What can that be? Inwhat does it resemble ours? I have no answers to these questions; but afew words will enable me to prove that the insect has a very exact andpersistent recollection of places which it has once visited. Here issomething which I have often witnessed. It sometimes happens that theplundered Ant-hill offers the Amazons a richer spoil than the invadingcolumn is able to carry away. Or, again, the region visited is rich inAnt-hills. Another raid is necessary, to exploit the site thoroughly. Insuch cases, a second expedition takes place, sometimes on the nextday, sometimes two or three days later. This time, the column does noreconnoitring on the way: it goes straight to the spot known to aboundin nymphs and travels by the identical path which it followed before. It has sometimes happened that I have marked with small stones, for adistance of twenty yards, the road pursued a couple of days earlierand have then found the Amazons proceeding by the same route, stone bystone:

'They will go first here and then there, ' I said, according to theposition of the guide-stones. 

And they would, in fact, go first here and then there, skirting my lineof pebbles, without any noticeable deviation. 

Can one believe that odoriferous emanations diffused along the routeare going to last for several days? No one would dare to suggest it. Itmust, therefore, be sight that directs the Amazons, sight assisted bya memory for places. And this memory is tenacious enough to retain theimpression until the next day and later; it is scrupulously faithful, for it guides the column by the same path as on the day before, acrossthe thousand irregularities of the ground. 

How will the Amazon behave when the locality is unknown to her? Apartfrom topographical memory, which cannot serve her here, the region inwhich I imagine her being still unexplored, does the Ant possess theMason-bee's sense of direction, at least within modest limits, and isshe able thus to regain her Ant-hill or her marching column?

The different parts of the garden are not all visited by the maraudinglegions to the same extent: the north side is exploited by preference, doubtless because the forays in that direction are more productive. The Amazons, therefore, generally direct their troops north of theirbarracks; I seldom see them in the south. This part of the garden is, ifnot wholly unknown, at least much less familiar to them than the other. Having said that, let us observe the conduct of the strayed Ant. 

I take up my position near the Ant-hill; and, when the column returnsfrom the slave-raid, I force an Ant to step on a leaf which I hold outto her. Without touching her, I carry her two or three paces away fromher regiment: no more than that, but in a southerly direction. It isenough to put her astray, to make her lose her bearings entirely. I seethe Amazon, now replaced on the ground, wander about at random, still, I need hardly say, with her booty in her mandibles; I see her hurryaway from her comrades, thinking that she is rejoining them; I see herretrace her steps, turn aside again, try to the right, try to the leftand grope in a host of directions, without succeeding in finding herwhereabouts. The pugnacious, strong-jawed slave-hunter is utterly losttwo steps away from her party. I have in mind certain strays who, afterhalf an hour's searching, had not succeeded in recovering the routeand were going farther and farther from it, still carrying the nymph intheir teeth. What became of them? What did they do with their spoil? Ihad not the patience to follow those dull-witted marauders to the end. 

Let us repeat the experiment, but place the Amazon to the north. After more or less prolonged hesitations, after a search now in thisdirection, now in that, the Ant succeeds in finding her column. Sheknows the locality. 

Here, of a surety, is a Hymenopteron deprived of that sense of directionwhich other Hymenoptera enjoy. She has in her favour a memory for placesand nothing more. A deviation amounting to two or three of our stridesis enough to make her lose her way and to keep her from returning toher people, whereas miles across unknown country will not foil theMason-bee. I expressed my surprise, just now, that man was deprived ofa wonderful sense wherewith certain animals are endowed. The enormousdistance between the two things compared might furnish matter fordiscussion. In the present case, the distance no longer exists: we haveto do with two insects very near akin, two Hymenoptera. Why, if theyissue from the same mould, has one a sense which the other has not, anadditional sense, constituting a much more overpowering factor than thestructural details? I will wait until the evolutionists condescend togive me a valid reason. 

To return to this memory for places whose tenacity and fidelity I havejust recognized: to what degree does it consent to retain impressions?Does the Amazon require repeated journeys in order to learn hergeography, or is a single expedition enough for her? Are the linefollowed and the places visited engraved on her memory from the first?The Red Ant does not lend herself to the tests that might furnish thereply: the experimenter is unable to decide whether the path followed bythe expeditionary column is being covered for the first time, nor is itin his power to compel the legion to adopt this or that differentroad. When the Amazons go out to plunder the Ant-hills, they take thedirection which they please; and we are not allowed to interfere withtheir march. Let us turn to other Hymenoptera for information. 

I select the Pompili, whose habits we shall study in detail in a laterchapter. (For the Wasp known as the Pompilus, or Ringed Calicurgus, cf. "The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated byAlexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 12. --Translator's Note. ) They arehunters of Spiders and diggers of burrows. The game, the food of thecoming larva, is first caught and paralysed; the home is excavatedafterwards. As the heavy prey would be a grave encumbrance to the Waspin search of a convenient site, the Spider is placed high up, on a tuftof grass or brushwood, out of the reach of marauders, especially Ants, who might damage the precious morsel in the lawful owner's absence. After fixing her booty on the verdant pinnacle, the Pompilus castsaround for a favourable spot and digs her burrow. During the process ofexcavation, she returns from time to time to her Spider; she nibbles atthe prize, feels, touches it here and there, as though taking stock ofits plumpness and congratulating herself on the plentiful provender;then she returns to her burrow and goes on digging. Should anythingalarm or distress her, she does not merely inspect her Spider: she alsobrings her a little closer to her work-yard, but never fails to lay heron the top of a tuft of verdure. These are the manoeuvres of which I canavail myself to gauge the elasticity of the Wasp's memory. 

While the Pompilus is at work on the burrow, I seize the prey and placeit in an exposed spot, half a yard away from its original position. The Pompilus soon leaves the hole to enquire after her booty and goesstraight to the spot where she left it. This sureness of direction, thisfaithful memory for places can be explained by repeated previous visits. I know nothing of what has happened beforehand. Let us take no noticeof this first expedition; the others will be more conclusive. For themoment, the Pompilus, without the least hesitation, finds the tuft ofgrass whereon her prey was lying. Then come marches and counter-marchesupon that tuft, minute explorations and frequent returns to the exactspot where the Spider was deposited. At last, convinced that theprize is no longer there, the Wasp makes a leisurely survey of theneighbourhood, feeling the ground with her antennae as she goes. TheSpider is descried in the exposed spot where I had placed her. Surpriseon the part of the Pompilus, who goes forward and then suddenly stepsback with a start:

'Is it alive?' she seems to ask. 'Is it dead? Is it really my Spider?Let us be wary!'

The hesitation does not last long: the huntress grabs her victim, drags her backwards and places her, still high up, on a second tuft ofherbage, two or three steps away from the first. She then goes backto the burrow and digs for a while. For the second time, I remove theSpider and lay her at some distance, on the bare ground. This is themoment to judge of the Wasp's memory. Two tufts of grass have served astemporary resting-places for the game. The first, to which she returnedwith such precision, the Wasp may have learnt to know by a more or lessthorough examination, by reiterated visits that escaped my eye; but thesecond has certainly made but a slight impression on her memory. Sheadopted it without any studied choice; she stopped there just longenough to hoist her Spider to the top; she saw it for the first time andsaw it hurriedly, in passing. Is that rapid glance enough to provide anexact recollection? Besides, there are now two localities to be modelledin the insect's memory: the first shelf may easily be confused with thesecond. To which will the Pompilus go?

We shall soon find out: here she comes, leaving the burrow to pay afresh visit to the Spider. She runs straight to the second tuft, whereshe hunts about for a long time for her absent prey. She knows that itwas there, when last seen, and not elsewhere; she persists in lookingfor it there and does not once think of going back to the first perch. The first tuft of grass no longer counts; the second alone interestsher. And then the search in the neighbourhood begins again. 

On finding her game on the bare spot where I myself have placed it, thePompilus quickly deposits the Spider on a third tuft of grass; and theexperiment is renewed. This time, the Pompilus hurries to the thirdtuft when she comes to look after her Spider; she hurries to it withouthesitation, without confusing it in any way with the first two, whichshe scorns to visit, so sure is her memory. I do the same thing a coupleof times more; and the insect always returns to the last perch, withoutworrying about the others. I stand amazed at the memory of that pigmy. She need but catch a single hurried glimpse of a spot that differs inno wise from a host of others in order to remember it quite well, notwithstanding the fact that, as a miner relentlessly pursuing herunderground labours, she has other matters to occupy her mind. Could ourown memory always vie with hers? It is very doubtful. Allow the Red Antthe same sort of memory; and her peregrinations, her returns to the nestby the same road are no longer difficult to explain. 

Tests of this kind have furnished me with some other results worthy ofmention. When convinced, by untiring explorations, that her prey is nolonger on the tuft where she laid it, the Pompilus, as we were saying, looks for it in the neighbourhood and finds it pretty easily, for I amcareful to put it in an exposed place. Let us increase the difficultyto some extent. I dig the tip of my finger into the ground and lay theSpider in the little hole thus obtained, covering her with a tiny leaf. Now the Wasp, while in quest of her lost prey, happens to walk over thisleaf, to pass it again and again without suspecting that the Spider liesbeneath, for she goes and continues her vain search farther off. Her guide, therefore is not scent, but sight. Nevertheless, she isconstantly feeling the ground with her antennae. What can be thefunction of those organs? I do not know, although I assert that theyare not olfactory organs. The Ammophila, in search of her Grey Worm, hadalready led me to make the same assertion; I now obtain an experimentalproof which seems to me decisive. I would add that the Pompilus has veryshort sight: often she passes within a couple of inches of her Spiderwithout seeing her. 

CHAPTER 7. SOME REFLECTIONS UPON INSECT PSYCHOLOGY. 

The laudator temperis acti is out of favour just now: the world is onthe move. Yes, but sometimes it moves backwards. When I was a boy, ourtwopenny textbooks told us that man was a reasoning animal; nowadays, there are learned volumes to prove to us that human reason is but ahigher rung in the ladder whose foot reaches down to the bottommostdepths of animal life. There is the greater and the lesser; there areall the intermediary rounds; but nowhere does it break off and startafresh. It begins with zero in the glair of a cell and ascends until wecome to the mighty brain of a Newton. The noble faculty of which we wereso proud is a zoological attribute. All have a larger or smaller shareof it, from the live atom to the anthropoid ape, that hideous caricatureof man. 

It always struck me that those who held this levelling theory made factssay more than they really meant; it struck me that, in order to obtaintheir plain, they were lowering the mountain-peak, man, and elevatingthe valley, the animal. Now this levelling of theirs needed proofs, to my mind; and, as I found none in their books, or at any rate onlydoubtful and highly debatable ones, I did my own observing, in order toarrive at a definite conviction; I sought; I experimented. 

To speak with any certainty, it behoves us not to go beyond whatwe really know. I am beginning to have a passable acquaintance withinsects, after spending some forty years in their company. Let usquestion the insect, then: not the first that comes along, but the mostgifted, the Hymenopteron. I am giving my opponents every advantage. Where will they find a creature more richly endowed with talent? Itwould seem as though, in creating it, nature had delighted in bestowingthe greatest amount of industry upon the smallest body of matter. Canthe bird, wonderful architect that it is, compare its work with thatmasterpiece of higher geometry, the edifice of the Bee? The Hymenopteronrivals man himself. We build towns, the Bee erects cities; we haveservants, the Ant has hers; we rear domestic animals, she rears hersugar-yielding insects; we herd cattle, she herds her milch-cows, the Aphides; we have abolished slavery, whereas she continues hernigger-traffic. 

Well, does this superior, this privileged being reason? Reader, do notsmile: this is a most serious matter, well worthy of our consideration. To devote our attention to animals is to plunge at once into the vexedquestion of who we are and whence we come. What, then, passes in thatlittle Hymenopteron brain? Has it faculties akin to ours, has it thepower of thought? What a problem, if we could only solve it; what achapter of psychology, if we could only write it! But, at our veryfirst questionings, the mysterious will rise up, impenetrable: we may beconvinced of that. We are incapable of knowing ourselves; what will itbe if we try to fathom the intellect of others? Let us be content if wesucceed in gleaning a few grains of truth. 

What is reason? Philosophy would give us learned definitions. Let us bemodest and keep to the simplest: we are only treating of animals. Reasonis the faculty that connects the effect with its cause and directsthe act by conforming it to the needs of the accidental. Within theselimits, are animals capable of reasoning? Are they able to connecta 'because' with a 'why' and afterwards to regulate their behaviouraccordingly? Are they able to change their line of conduct when facedwith an emergency?

History has but few data likely to be of use to us here; and those whichwe find scattered in various authors are seldom able to withstanda severe examination. One of the most remarkable of which I know issupplied by Erasmus Darwin, in his book entitled "Zoonomia. " It tells ofa Wasp that has just caught and killed a big Fly. The wind is blowing;and the huntress, hampered in her flight by the great area presented byher prize, alights on the ground to amputate the abdomen, the head andthe wings; she flies away, carrying with her only the thorax, whichgives less hold to the wind. If we keep to the bald facts, this does, I admit, give a semblance of reason. The Wasp appears to grasp therelation between cause and effect. The effect is the resistanceexperienced in the flight; the cause is the dimensions of the preycontending with the air. Hence the logical conclusion: those dimensionsmust be lessened; the abdomen, the head and, above all, the wings mustbe chopped off; and the resistance will be decreased. (I would gladly, if I were able, cancel some rather hasty lines which I allowed myselfto pen in the first volume of these "Souvenirs" but scripta manent. Allthat I can do is to make amends now, in this note, for the error intowhich I fell. Relying on Lacordaire, who quotes this instance fromErasmus Darwin in his own "Introduction a l'entomologie", I believedthat a Sphex was given as the heroine of the story. How could I dootherwise, not having the original text in front of me? How could Isuspect that an entomologist of Lacordaire's standing should be capableof such a blunder as to substitute a Sphex for a Common Wasp? Great wasmy perplexity, in the face of this evidence! A Sphex capturing a Fly wasan impossibility; and I blamed the British scientist accordingly. Butwhat insect was it that Erasmus Darwin saw? Calling logic to my aid, I declared that it was a Wasp; and I could not have hit the markmore truly. Charles Darwin, in fact, informed me afterwards that hisgrandfather wrote 'a Wasp' in his "Zoonomia. " Though the correction didcredit to my intelligence, I none the less deeply regretted my mistake, for I had uttered suspicions of the observer's powers of discernment, unjust suspicions which the translator's inaccuracy led me intoentertaining. May this note serve to mitigate the harshness of thestrictures provoked by my overtaxed credulity! I do not scruple toattack ideas which I consider false; but Heaven forfend that I shouldever attack those who uphold them!--Author's Note. )

But does this concatenation of ideas, rudimentary though it be, reallytake place within the insect's brain? I am convinced of the contrary;and my proofs are unanswerable. In the first volume of these "Souvenirs"(Cf. "Insect Life": chapter 9. --Translator's Note. ), I demonstratedby experiment that Erasmus Darwin's Wasp was but obeying her instinct, which is to cut up the captured game and to keep only the mostnourishing part, the thorax. Whether the day be perfectly calm orwhether the wind blow, whether she be in the shelter of a dense thicketor in the open, I see the Wasp proceed to separate the succulent fromthe tough; I see her reject the legs, the wings, the head and theabdomen, retaining only the breast as pap for her larvae. Then whatvalue has this dissection as an argument in favour of the insect'sreasoning-powers when the wind blows? It has no value at all, for itwould take place just the same in absolutely calm weather. ErasmusDarwin jumped too quickly to his conclusion, which was the outcome ofhis mental bias and not of the logic of things. If he had first enquiredinto the Wasp's habits, he would not have brought forward as a seriousargument an incident which had no connection with the important questionof animal reason. 

I have reverted to this case to show the difficulties that beset the manwho confines himself to casual observations, however carefully carriedout. One should never rely upon a lucky chance, which may not occuragain. We must multiply our observations, check them one with the other;we must create incidents, looking into preceding ones, finding outsucceeding ones and working out the relation between them all: then andnot till then, with extreme caution, are we entitled to express a fewviews worthy of credence. Nowhere do I find data collected under suchconditions; for which reason, however much I might wish it, it isimpossible for me to bring the evidence of others in support of the fewconclusions which I myself have formed. 

My Mason-bees, with their nests hanging on the walls of the arch which Ihave mentioned, lent themselves to continuous experiment better than anyother Hymenopteron. I had them there, at my house, under my eyes, atall hours of the day, as long as I wished. I was free to follow theiractions in full detail and to carry out successfully any experiment, however long. Moreover, their numbers allowed me to repeat my attemptsuntil I was perfectly convinced. The Mason-bees, therefore, shall supplyme with the materials for this chapter also. 

A few words, before I begin, about the works. The Mason-bee of the Shedsutilizes, first of all, the old galleries of the clay nest, a part ofwhich she good-naturedly abandons to two Osmiae, her free tenants: theThree-horned Osmia and Latreille's Osmia. These old corridors, whichsave labour, are in great demand; but there are not many vacant, as themore precocious Osmiae have already taken possession of most of them;and therefore the building of new cells soon begins. These cells arecemented to the surface of the nest, which thus increases in thicknessevery year. The edifice of cells is not built all at once: mortar andhoney alternate repeatedly. The masonry starts with a sort of littleswallow's nest, a half-cup or thimble, whose circumference is completedby the wall against which it rests. Picture the cup of an acorn cut intwo and stuck to the surface of the nest: there you have the receptaclein a stage sufficiently advanced to take a first instalment of honey. 

The Bee thereupon leaves the mortar and busies herself with harvesting. After a few foraging-trips, the work of building is resumed; and somenew rows of bricks raise the edge of the basin, which becomes capableof receiving a larger stock of provisions. Then comes another change ofbusiness: the mason once more becomes a harvester. A little later, theharvester is again a mason; and these alternations continue until thecell is of the regulation height and holds the amount of honey requiredfor the larva's food. Thus come, turn and turn about, more or lessnumerous according to the occupation in hand, journeys to the dry andbarren path, where the cement is gathered and mixed, and journeys tothe flowers, where the Bee's crop is crammed with honey and her bellypowdered with pollen. 

At last comes the time for laying. We see the Bee arrive with a pelletof mortar. She gives a glance at the cell to enquire if everything is inorder; she inserts her abdomen; and the egg is laid. Then and therethe mother seals up the home: with her pellet of cement she closes theorifice and manages so well with the material that the lid receives itspermanent form at this first sitting; it has only to be thickened andstrengthened with fresh layers, a work which is less urgent and willbe done by and by. What does appear to be an urgent necessity is theclosing of the cell immediately after the egg has been religiouslydeposited therein, so that there may be no danger from evilly-disposedvisitors during the mother's absence. The Bee must have serious reasonsfor thus hurrying on the closing of the cell. What would happen if, after laying her egg, she left the house open and went to the cement-pitto fetch the wherewithal to block the door? Some thief might drop inand substitute her own egg for the Mason-bee's. We shall see that oursuspicions are not uncalled-for. One thing is certain, that the Masonnever lays without having in her mandibles the pellet of mortar requiredfor the immediate construction of the lid of the nest. The preciousegg must not for a single instant remain exposed to the cupidity ofmarauders. 

To these particulars I will add a few general observations which willmake what follows easier to understand. So long as its circumstances arenormal, the insect's actions are calculated most rationally in view ofthe object to be attained. What could be more logical, for instance, than the devices employed by the Hunting Wasp when paralysing her prey(Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 3 to 12 and 15 to 17. --Translator's Note. )so that it may keep fresh for her larva, while in no wise imperillingthat larva's safety? It is preeminently rational; we ourselves couldthink of nothing better; and yet the Wasp's action is not prompted byreason. If she thought out her surgery, she would be our superior. Itwill never occur to anybody that the creature is able, in the smallestdegree, to account for its skilful vivisections. Therefore, so longas it does not depart from the path mapped out for it, the insect canperform the most sagacious actions without entitling us in the least toattribute these to the dictates of reason. 

What would happen in an emergency? Here we must distinguish carefullybetween two classes of emergency, or we shall be liable to grievouserror. First, in accidents occurring in the course of the insect'soccupation at the moment. In these circumstances, the creature iscapable of remedying the accident; it continues, under a similar form, its actual task; it remains, in short; in the same psychic condition. In the second case, the accident is connected with a more remoteoccupation; it relates to a completed task with which, under normalconditions, the insect is no longer concerned. To meet this emergency, the creature would have to retrace its psychic course; it would haveto do all over again what it has just finished, before turning itsattention to anything else. Is the insect capable of this? Will it beable to leave the present and return to the past? Will it decide to harkback to a task that is much more pressing than the one on which it wasengaged? If it did all this, then we should really have evidence of amodicum of reason. The question shall be settled by experiment. 

We will begin by taking a few incidents that come under the firstheading. A Mason-bee has finished the initial layer of the covering ofthe cell. She has gone in search of a second pellet of mortar wherewithto strengthen her work. In her absence, I prick the lid with a needleand widen the hole thus made, until it is half the size of the opening. The insect returns and repairs the damage. It was originally engaged onthe lid and is merely continuing its work in mending that lid. 

A second is still at her first row of bricks. The cell as yet is no morethan a shallow cup, containing no provisions. I make a big hole in thebottom of the cup and the Bee hastens to stop the breach. She was busybuilding and turned aside a moment to do more building. Her repairs arethe continuation of the work on which she was engaged. 

A third has laid her egg and closed the cell. While she is gone insearch of a fresh supply of cement to strengthen the door, I make alarge aperture immediately below the lid, too high up to allow thehoney to escape. The insect, on arriving with its mortar intended fora different task, sees its broken jar and soon puts the damage right. I have rarely witnessed such a sensible performance. Nevertheless, allthings considered, let us not be too lavish of our praises. The insectwas busy closing up. On its return, it sees a crack, representing in itseyes a bad join which it had overlooked; it completes its actual task byimproving the join. 

The conclusion to be drawn from these three instances, which I selectfrom a large number of others, more or less similar, is that the insectis able to cope with emergencies, provided that the new action be notoutside the course of its actual work at the moment. Shall we say thenthat reason directs it? Why should we? The insect persists in the samepsychic course, it continues its action, it does what it was doingbefore, it corrects what to it appears but a careless flaw in the workof the moment. 

Here, moreover, is something which would change our estimate entirely, if it ever occurred to us to look upon these repaired breaches as awork dictated by reason. Let us turn to the second class of emergencyreferred to above: let us imagine, first, cells similar to those in thesecond experiment, that is to say, only half-finished, in the form of ashallow cup, but already containing honey. I make a hole in the bottom, through which the provisions ooze and run to waste. Their ownersare harvesting. Let us imagine, on the other hand, cells very nearlyfinished and almost completely provisioned. I perforate the bottom inthe same way and let out the honey, which drips through gradually. Theowners of these are building. 

Judging by what has gone before, the reader will perhaps expect to seeimmediate repairs, urgent repairs, for the safety of the future larva isat stake. Let him dismiss any such illusion: more and more journeys areundertaken, now in quest of food, now in quest of mortar; but not one ofthe Mason-bees troubles about the disastrous breach. The harvester goeson harvesting; the busy bricklayer proceeds with her next row of bricks, as though nothing out of the way had happened. Lastly, if the injuredcells are high enough and contain enough provisions, the Bee lays hereggs, puts a door to the house and passes on to another house, withoutdoing aught to remedy the leakage of the honey. Two or three days later, those cells have lost all their contents, which now form a long trail onthe surface of the nest. 

Is it through lack of intelligence that the Bee allows her honey to goto waste? May it not rather be through helplessness? It might happenthat the sort of mortar which the Mason has at her disposal will not seton the edges of a hole that is sticky with honey. The honey may preventthe cement from adjusting itself to the orifice, in which case theinsect's inertness would merely be resignation to an irreparable evil. Let us look into the matter before drawing inferences. With my forceps, I deprive the Bee of her pellet of mortar and apply it to the holewhence the honey is escaping. My attempt at repairing meets with thefullest success, though I do not pretend to compete with the Masonin dexterity. For a piece of work done by a man's hand it is quitecreditable. My dab of mortar fits nicely into the mutilated wall;it hardens as usual; and the escape of honey ceases. This is quitesatisfactory. What would it be had the work been done by the insect, equipped with its tools of exquisite precision? When the Mason-beerefrains, therefore, this is not due to helplessness on her part, nor toany defect in the material employed. 

Another objection presents itself. We are going too far perhaps inadmitting this concatenation of ideas in the insect's mind, in expectingit to argue that the honey is running away because the cell has a holein it and that to save it from being wasted the hole must be stopped. So much logic perhaps exceeds the powers of its poor little brain. Then, again, the hole is not seen; it is hidden by the honey tricklingthrough. The cause of that stream of honey is an unknown cause; andto trace the loss of the liquid home to that cause, to the hole in thereceptacle, is too lofty a piece of reasoning for the insect. 

A cell in the rudimentary cup-stage and containing no provisions has ahole, three or four millimetres (. 11 to. 15 inch. --Translator's Note. )wide, made in it at the bottom. A few moments later, this orifice isstopped by the Mason. We have already witnessed a similar patching. Theinsect, having finished, starts foraging. I reopen the hole at the sameplace. The pollen runs through the aperture and falls to the groundas the Bee is rubbing off her first load in the cell. The damage isundoubtedly observed. When plunging her head into the cup to take stockof what she has stored, the Bee puts her antennae into the artificialhole: she sounds it, she explores it, she cannot fail to perceive it. 

I see the two feelers quivering outside the hole. The insect notices thebreach in the wall: that is certain. It flies off. Will it bring backmortar from its present journey to repair the injured jar as it did justnow?

Not at all. It returns with provisions, it disgorges its honey, it rubsoff its pollen, it mixes the material. The sticky and almost solid massfills up the opening and oozes through with difficulty. I roll a spillof paper and free the hole, which remains open and shows daylightdistinctly in both directions. I sweep the place clear over and overagain, whenever this becomes necessary because new provisions arebrought; I clean the opening sometimes in the Bee's absence, sometimesin her presence, while she is busy mixing her paste. The unusualhappenings in the warehouse plundered from below cannot escape her anymore than the ever-open breach at the bottom of the cell. Nevertheless, for three consecutive hours, I witness this strange sight: the Bee, fullof active zeal for the task in hand, omits to plug this vessel of theDanaides. She persists in trying to fill her cracked receptacle, whence the provisions disappear as soon as stored away. She constantlyalternates between builder's and harvester's work; she raises the edgesof the cell with fresh rows of bricks; she brings provisions which Icontinue to abstract, so as to leave the breach always visible. Shemakes thirty-two journeys before my eyes, now for mortar, now for honey, and not once does she bethink herself of stopping the leakage at thebottom of her jar. 

At five o'clock in the evening, the works cease. They are resumed onthe morrow. This time, I neglect to clean out my artificial orifice andleave the victuals gradually to ooze out by themselves. At length, theegg is laid and the door sealed up, without anything being done by theBee in the matter of the disastrous breach. And yet to plug the holewere an easy matter for her: a pellet of her mortar would suffice. Besides, while the cup was still empty, did she not instantly close thehole which I had made? Why are not those early repairs of hers repeated?It clearly shows the creature's inability to retrace the course of itsactions, however slightly. At the time of the first breach, the cup wasempty and the insect was laying the first rows of bricks. The accidentproduced through my agency concerned the part of the work which occupiedthe Bee at the actual moment; it was a flaw in the building, such as canoccur naturally in new courses of masonry, which have not had time toharden. In correcting that flaw, the Mason did not go outside her usualwork. 

But, once the provisioning begins, the cup is finished for good and all;and, come what may, the insect will not touch it again. The harvesterwill go on harvesting, though the pollen trickle to the ground throughthe drain. To plug the hole would imply a change of occupation of whichthe insect is incapable for the moment. It is the honey's turn and notthe mortar's. The rule upon this point is invariable. A moment comes, presently, when the harvesting is interrupted and the masoning resumed. The edifice must be raised a storey higher. Will the Bee, once more abuilder, mixing fresh cement, now attend to the leakage at the bottom?No more than before. What occupies her at present is the new floor, whose brickwork would be repaired at once, if it sustained a damage;but the bottom storey is too old a part of the business, it is ancienthistory; and the worker will not put a further touch to it, even thoughit be in serious danger. 

For the rest, the present and the following storeys will all havethe same fate. Carefully watched by the insect as long as they are inprocess of building, they are forgotten and allowed to go to ruin oncethey are actually built. Here is a striking instance: in a cell whichhas attained its full height, I make a window, almost as large as thenatural opening, and place it about half-way up, above the honey. The Bee brings provisions for some time longer and then lays her egg. Through my big window, I see the egg deposited on the victuals. Theinsect next works at the cover, to which it gives the finishing toucheswith a series of little taps, administered with infinite care, while thebreach remains yawning. On the lid, it scrupulously stops up every porethat could admit so much as an atom; but it leaves the great openingthat places the house at the mercy of the first-comer. It goes to thatbreach repeatedly, puts in its head, examines it, explores it with itsantennae, nibbles the edges of it. And that is all. The mutilated cellshall stay as it is, with never a dab of mortar. The threatened partdates too far back for the Bee to think of troubling about it. 

I have said enough, I think, to show the insect's mental incapacity inthe presence of the accidental. This incapacity is confirmed by renewingthe test, an essential condition of all good experiments; thereforemy notes are full of examples similar to the one which I have justdescribed. To relate them would be mere repetition; I pass them over forthe sake of brevity. 

The renewal of a test is not sufficient: we must also vary our test. Letus, then, examine the insect's intelligence from another point of view, that of the introduction of foreign bodies into the cell. The Mason-beeis a housekeeper of scrupulous cleanliness, as indeed are all theHymenoptera. Not a spot of dirt is suffered in her honey-pot; not agrain of dust is permitted on the surface of her mixture. And yet, whilethe jar is open, the precious Bee-bread is exposed to accidents. Theworkers in the cells above may inadvertently drop a little mortar intothe lower cells; the owner herself, when working at enlarging the jar, runs the risk of letting a speck of cement fall into the provisions. A Gnat, attracted by the smell, may come and be caught in the honey;brawls between neighbours who are getting into each other's way maysend some dust flying thither. All this refuse has to disappear and thatquickly, lest afterwards the larva should find coarse fare under itsdelicate mandibles. Therefore the Mason-bees must be able to cleanse thecell of any foreign body. And, in point of fact, they are well able todo so. 

I place on the surface of the honey five or six bits of strawa millimetre in length. (. 039 inch. --Translator's Note. ) Greatastonishment on the part of the returning insect. Never before have somany sweepings accumulated in its warehouse. The Bee picks out the bitsof straw, one by one, to the very last, and each time goes and gets ridof them at a distance. The effort is out of all proportion to the work:I see the Bee soar above the nearest plane-tree, to a height of thirtyfeet, and fly away beyond it to rid herself of her burden, a mere atom. She fears lest she should litter the place by dropping her bit of strawon the ground, under the nest. A thing like that must be carried veryfar away. 

I place upon the honey-paste a Mason-bee's egg which I myself sawlaid in an adjacent cell. The Bee picks it out and throws it away at adistance, as she did with the straws just now. There are two inferencesto be drawn from this, both extremely interesting. In the first place, that precious egg, for whose future the Bee labours so indefatigably, becomes a valueless, cumbersome, hateful thing when it belongs toanother. Her own egg is everything; the egg of her next door neighbouris nothing. It is flung on the dust-heap like any bit of rubbish. Theindividual, so zealous on behalf of her family, displays an abominableindifference for the rest of her kind. Each one for himself. In thesecond place, I ask myself, without as yet being able to find an answerto my question, how certain parasites go to work to give their larva thebenefit of the provisions accumulated by the Mason-bee. If they decideto lay their egg on the victuals in the open cell, the Bee, when shesees it, will not fail to cast it out; if they decide to lay after theowner, they cannot do so, for she blocks up the door as soon as herlaying is done. This curious problem must be reserved for futureinvestigation. (Cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapters 2 to 4; also laterchapters in the present volume. --Translator's Note. )

Lastly, I stick into the paste a bit of straw nearly an inch long andstanding well out above the rim of the cell. The insect extracts it bydint of great efforts, dragging it away from one side; or else, withthe help of its wings, it drags it from above. It darts away with thehoney-smeared straw and gets rid of it at a distance, after flying overthe plane-tree. 

This is where things begin to get complicated. I have said that, whenthe time comes for laying, the Mason-bee arrives with a pellet of mortarwherewith immediately to make a door to the house. The insect, with itsfront legs resting on the rim, inserts its abdomen in the cell; it hasthe mortar ready in its mouth. Having laid the egg, it comes out andturns round to block the door. I wave it away for a second, at thesame time planting my straw as before, a straw sticking out nearly acentimetre. (. 39 inch. --Translator's Note. ) What will the Bee do? Willshe, who is scrupulous in ridding the home of the least mote of dust, extract this beam, which would certainly prove the larva's undoing byinterfering with its growth? She could, for just now we saw her drag outand throw away, at a distance, a similar beam. 

She could and she doesn't. She closes the cell, cements the lid, sealsup the straw in the thickness of the mortar. More journeys are taken, not a few, in search of the cement required to strengthen the cover. Each time, the mason applies the material with the most minute care, while giving the straw not a thought. In this way, I obtain, one afterthe other, eight closed cells whose lids are surmounted by my mast, abit of protruding straw. What evidence of obtuse intelligence!

This result is deserving of attentive consideration. At the moment whenI am inserting my beam, the insect has its mandibles engaged: they areholding the pellet of mortar intended for the blocking-operation. Asthe extracting-tool is not free, the extraction does not take place. Iexpected to see the Bee relinquish her mortar and then proceed to removethe encumbrance. A dab of mortar more or less is not a serious business. I had already noticed that it takes my Mason-bees a journey of threeor four minutes to collect one. The pollen-expeditions last longer, amatter of ten or fifteen minutes. To drop her pellet, grab the strawwith her mandibles, now disengaged, remove it and gather a fresh supplyof cement would entail a loss of five minutes at most. The Bee decidesdifferently. She will not, she cannot relinquish her pellet; andshe uses it. No matter that the larva will perish by this untimelytrowelling: the moment has come to wall up the door; the door is walledup. Once the mandibles are free, the extraction could be attempted, atthe risk of wrecking the lid. But the Bee does nothing of the sort: shekeeps on fetching mortar; and the lid is religiously finished. 

We might go on to say that, if the Bee were obliged to depart in questof fresh mortar after dropping the first to withdraw the straw, shewould leave the egg unguarded and that this would be an extreme measurewhich the mother cannot bring herself to adopt. Then why does she notplace the pellet on the rim of the cell? The mandibles, now free, would remove the beam; the pellet would be taken up again at once; andeverything would go to perfection. But no: the insect has its mortarand, come what may, employs it on the work for which it was intended. 

If any one sees a rudiment of reason in this Hymenopteron intelligence, he has eyes that are more penetrating than mine. I see nothing in itall but an invincible persistence in the act once begun. The cogs havegripped; and the rest of the wheels must follow. The mandibles arefastened on the pellet of mortar; and the idea, the wish to unfastenthem will never occur to the insect until the pellet has fulfilled itspurpose. And here is a still greater absurdity: the plugging oncebegun is very carefully finished with fresh relays of mortar! Exquisiteattention is paid to a closing-up which is henceforth useless; noattention at all to the dangerous beam. O little gleams of reason thatare said to enlighten the animal, you are very near the darkness, youare naught!

Another and still more eloquent fact will finally convince whoso mayyet be doubting. The ration of honey stored up in a cell is evidentlymeasured by the needs of the coming larva. There is neither too much nortoo little. How does the Bee know when the proper quantity is reached?The cells are more or less constant in dimension, but they are notfilled completely, only to about two-thirds of their height. A largespace is therefore left empty; and the victualler has to judge of themoment when the surface of the mess has attained the right level. Thehoney being perfectly opaque, its depth is not apparent. I have to usea sounding-rod when I want to gauge the contents of the jar; and I find, on the average, that the honey reaches a depth of ten millimetres. (. 39inch. --Translator's Note. ) The Bee has not this resource; she hassight, which may enable her to estimate the full section from the emptysection. This presupposes the possession of a somewhat geometric eye, capable of measuring the third of a distance. If the insect did it byEuclid, that would be very brilliant of it. What a magnificent proof infavour of its little intellect: a Chalicodoma with a geometrician's eye, able to divide a straight line into three equal parts! This is worthlooking into seriously. 

I take five cells, which are only partly provisioned, and empty them oftheir honey with a wad of cotton held in my forceps. From time totime, as the Bee brings new provisions, I repeat the cleansing-process, sometimes clearing out the cell entirely, sometimes leaving a thin layerat the bottom. I do not observe any pronounced hesitation on the part ofmy plundered victims, even though they surprise me at the moment whenI am draining the jar; they continue their work with quiet industry. Sometimes, two or three threads of cotton remain clinging to thewalls of the cells: the Bees remove them carefully and dart away to adistance, as usual, to get rid of them. At last, a little sooner or alittle later, the egg is laid and the lid fastened on. 

I break open the five closed cells. In one, the egg has been laid onthree millimetres of honey (. 117 inch. --Translator's Note. ); in two, onone millimetre (. 039 inch. --Translator's Note. ); and, in the two others, it is placed on the side of the receptacle drained of all its contents, or, to be more accurate, having only the glaze, the varnish left by thefriction of the honey-covered cotton. 

The inference is obvious: the Bee does not judge of the quantity ofhoney by the elevation of the surface; she does not reason like ageometrician, she does not reason at all. She accumulates so long as shefeels within her the secret impulse that prompts her to go on collectinguntil the victualling is completed; she ceases to accumulate when thatimpulse is satisfied, irrespective of the result, which in this casehappens to be worthless. No mental faculty, assisted by sight, informsher when she has enough, or when she has too little. An instinctivepredisposition is her only guide, an infallible guide under normalconditions, but hopelessly lost when subjected to the wiles of theexperimenter. Had the Bee the least glimmer of reason would she lay heregg on the third, on the tenth part of the necessary provender? Wouldshe lay it in an empty cell? Would she be guilty of such inconceivablematernal aberration as to leave her nurseling without nourishment? Ihave told the story; let the reader decide. 

This instinctive predisposition, which does not leave the insect free toact and, through that very fact, saves it from error, bursts forth underyet another aspect. Let us grant the Bee as much judgment as you please. Thus endowed, will she be capable of meting out the future's larva'sportion? By no means. The Bee does not know what that portion is. Thereis nothing to tell the materfamilias; and yet, at her first attempt, shefills the honey-pot to the requisite depth. True, in her childhood shereceived a similar ration, but she consumed it in the darkness ofa cell; and besides, as a grub, she was blind. Sight was not herinformant: it did not tell her the quantity of the provisions. Didmemory, the memory of the stomach that once digested them? But digestiontook place a year ago; and since that distant epoch, the nurseling, nowan adult insect, has changed its shape, its dwelling, its mode oflife. It was a grub; it is a Bee. Does the actual insect remember thatchildhood's meal? No more than we remember the sups of milk drawn fromour mother's breast. The Bee, therefore, knows nothing of the quantityof provisions needed by her larva, whether from memory, from exampleor from acquired experience. Then what guides her when she makes herestimate with such precision? Judgment and sight would leave the mothergreatly perplexed, liable to provide too much or not enough. To instructher beyond the possibility of a mistake demands a special tendency, an unconscious impulse, an instinct, an inward voice that dictates themeasure to be apportioned. 

CHAPTER 8. PARASITES. 

In August or September, let us go into some gorge with bare andsun-scorched sides. When we find a slope well-baked by the summer heat, a quiet corner with the temperature of an oven, we will call a halt:there is a fine harvest to be gathered there. This tropical land is thenative soil of a host of Wasps and Bees, some of them busily piling thehousehold provisions in underground warehouses: here a stack of Weevils, Locusts or Spiders, there a whole assortment of Flies, Bees, Mantes orCaterpillars, while others are storing up honey in membranous walletsor clay pots, or else in cottony bags or urns made with the punched-outdisks of leaves. 

With the industrious folk who go quietly about their business, thelabourers, masons, foragers, warehousers, mingles the parasitic tribe, the prowlers hurrying from one home to the next, lying in wait at thedoors, watching for a favourable opportunity to settle their family atthe expense of others. 

A heart-rending struggle, in truth, is that which rules the insect worldand in a measure our own world too. No sooner has a worker, by dintof exhausting labour, amassed a fortune for his children than thenon-producers come hastening up to contend for its possession. To onewho amasses there are sometimes five, six or more bent upon his ruin;and often it ends not merely in robbery but in black murder. Theworker's family, the object of so much care, for whom that home wasbuilt and those provisions stored, succumb, devoured by the intruders, directly the little bodies have acquired the soft roundness of youth. Shut up in a cell that is closed on every side, protected by itssilken covering, the grub, once its victuals are consumed, sinks into aprofound slumber, during which the organic changes needed for the futuretransformation take place. For this new hatching, which is to turn agrub into a Bee, for this general remodelling, the delicacy of whichdemands absolute repose, all the precautions that make for safety havebeen taken. 

These precautions will be foiled. The enemy will succeed in penetratingthe impregnable fortress; each foe has his special tactics, contrivedwith appalling skill. See, an egg is inserted by means of a probe besidethe torpid larva; or else, in the absence of such an implement, aninfinitesimal grub, an atom, comes creeping and crawling, slips in andreaches the sleeper, who will never wake again, already a succulentmorsel for her ferocious visitor. The interloper makes the victim's celland cocoon his own cell and his own cocoon; and next year, instead ofthe mistress of the house, there will come from below ground the banditwho usurped the dwelling and consumed the occupant. 

Look at this one, striped black, white and red, with the figure of aclumsy, hairy Ant. She explores the slope on foot, inspects every nookand corner, sounds the soil with her antennae. She is a Mutilla, thescourge of the cradled grubs. The female has no wings, but, being aWasp, she carries a sharp poniard. To novice eyes she would easily passfor a sort of robust Ant, distinguished from the common ruck by her garbof staring motley. The male, wide-winged and more gracefully shaped, hovers incessantly a few inches above the sandy expanse. For hours at atime, on the same spot, after the manner of the Scolia-wasp he spiesthe coming of the females out of the ground. If our watch be patient andpersevering, we shall see the mother, after trotting about for a bit, stop somewhere and begin to scratch and dig, finally laying bare asubterranean gallery, of which there was nothing to betray the entrance;but she can discern what is invisible to us. She penetrates into theabode, remains there for a while and at last reappears to replace therubbish and close the door as it was at the start. The abominable deedis done: the Mutilla's egg has been laid in another's cocoon, beside theslumbering larva on which the newborn grub will feed. 

Here are others, all aglitter with metallic gleams: gold, emerald, blue and purple. They are the humming-birds of the insect-world, theChrysis-wasps, or Golden Wasps, another set of exterminators of thelarvae overcome with lethargy in their cocoons. In them, the atrociousassassin of cradled children lies hidden under the splendour of thegarb. One of them, half emerald and half pale-pink, Parnopes carnea byname, boldly enters the burrow of Bembex rostrata at the very momentwhen the mother is at home, bringing a fresh piece to her larva, whomshe feeds from day to day. To the elegant criminal, unskilled in navvy'swork, this is the one moment to find the door open. If the mother wereaway, the house would be shut up; and the Golden Wasp, that sneak-thiefin royal robes, could not get in. She enters, therefore, dwarf as sheis, the house of the giantess whose ruin she is meditating; she makesher way right to the back, all heedless of the Bembex, her sting andher powerful jaws. What cares she that the home is not deserted? Eitherunmindful of the danger or paralysed with terror, the Bembex mother letsher have her way. 

The unconcern of the invaded is equalled only by the boldness ofthe invader. Have I not seen the Anthophora-bee, at the door to herdwelling, stand a little to one side and make room for the Melecta toenter the honey-stocked cells and substitute her family for the unhappyparent's? One would think that they were two friends meeting on thethreshold, one going in, the other out!

It is written in the book of fate: everything shall happen withoutimpediment in the burrow of the Bembex; and next year, if we open thecells of that mighty huntress of Gad-flies, we shall find some whichcontain a russet-silk cocoon, the shape of a thimble with its orificeclosed with a flat lid. In this silky tabernacle, which is protectedby the hard outer shell, is a Parnopes carnea. As for the grub of theBembex, that grub which wove the silk and next encrusted the outercasing with sand, it has disappeared entirely, all but the tatteredremnants of its skin. Disappeared how? The Golden Wasp's grub has eatenit. 

Another of these splendid malefactors is decked in lapis-lazuli on thethorax and in Florentine bronze and gold on the abdomen, with a terminalscarf of azure. The nomenclators have christened her Stilbum calens, FAB. When Eumenes Amedei (A species of Mason-wasp. --Translator's Note. )has built on the rock her agglomeration of dome-shaped cells, witha casing of little pebbles set in the plaster, when the store ofCaterpillars is consumed and the secluded ones have hung theirapartments with silk, we see the Stilbum take her stand on theinviolable citadel. No doubt some imperceptible cranny, some defect inthe cement, allows her to insert her ovipositor, which shoots out likea probe. At any rate, about the end of the following May, the Eumenes'chamber contains a cocoon which again is shaped like a thimble. Fromthis cocoon comes a Stilbum calens. There is nothing left of theEumenes' grub: the Golden Wasp has gorged herself upon it. 

Flies play no small part in this brigandage. Nor are they the leastto be dreaded, weaklings though they be, sometimes so feeble that thecollector dare not take them in his fingers for fear of crushing them. There are some clad in velvet so extraordinarily delicate that the leasttouch rubs it off. They are fluffs of down almost as frail, in theirsoft elegance, as the crystalline edifice of a snowflake before ittouches ground. They are called Bombylii. 

With this fragility of structure is combined an incomparable power offlight. See this one, hovering motionless two feet above the ground. Herwings vibrate so rapidly that they appear to be in repose. The insectlooks as though it were hung at one point in space by some invisiblethread. You make a movement; and the Bombylius has disappeared. You castyour eyes in search of her around you, far away, judging the distanceby the vigour of her flight. There is nothing here, nothing there. Thenwhere is she? Close by you. Look at the point whence she started:the Bombylius is there again, hovering motionless. From this aerialobservatory, as quickly recovered as quitted, she inspects the ground, watching for the favourable moment to establish her egg at the cost ofanother creature's destruction. What does she covet for heroffspring: the honey-cupboard, the stores of game, the larvae in theirtransformation-sleep? I do not know yet, What I do know is that herslender legs and her dainty velvet dress do not allow her to makeunderground searches. When she has found the propitious place, suddenlyshe will swoop down, lay her egg on the surface in that lightningtouch with the tip of her abdomen and straightway fly up again. What Isuspect, for reasons set forth presently, is that the grub that comesout of the Bombylius' egg must, of its own motion, at its own risk andperil, reach the victuals which the mother knows to be close at hand. She has no strength to do more; and it is for the new-born grub to makeits way into the refectory. 

I am better acquainted with the manoeuvres of certain Tachinae, thetiniest of pale-grey Flies, who, cowering on the sand in the sun, in theneighbourhood of a burrow, patiently await the hour at which to strikethe fell blow. Let a Bembex-wasp return from the chase, with herGad-fly; a Philanthus, with her Bee; a Cerceris, with her Weevil; aTachytes, with her Locust: straightway the parasites are there, comingand going, turning and twisting with the Wasp, always at her rear, without allowing themselves to be put off by any cautious feints. At themoment when the huntress goes indoors, with her captured game betweenher legs, they fling themselves on her prey, which is on the point ofdisappearing underground, and nimbly lay their eggs upon it. The thingis done in the twinkling of an eye: before the threshold is crossed, the carcase holds the germs of a new set of guests, who will feed onvictuals not amassed for them and starve the children of the house todeath. 

This other, resting on the burning sand, is also a member of theFly tribe; she is an Anthrax. (Cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapter2. --Translator's Note. ) She has wide wings, spread horizontally, halfsmoked and half transparent. She wears a dress of velvet, like theBombylius, her near neighbour in the official registers; but, thoughthe soft down is similar in fineness, it is very different in colour. Anthrax is Greek for coal. It is a happy denomination, reminding us ofthe Fly's mourning livery, a coal-black livery with silver tears. Thesame deep mourning garbs those parasitic Bees, and these are the onlyinstances known to me of that violent opposition of dead black andwhite. 

Nowadays, when men interpret everything with glorious assurance, whenthey explain the Lion's tawny mane as due to the colour of the Africandesert, attribute the Tiger's dark stripes to the streaks of shadow castby the bamboos and extricate any number of other magnificent things withthe same facility from the mists of the unknown, I should not be sorryto hear what they have to say of the Melecta, the Crocisa and theAnthrax and of the origin of their exceptional costume. 

The word 'mimesis' has been invented for the express purpose ofdesignating the animal's supposed faculty of adapting itself to itsenvironment by imitating the objects around it, at least in the matterof colouring. We are told that it uses this faculty to baffle its foes, or else to approach its prey without alarming it. Finding itself thebetter for this dissimulation, a source of prosperity indeed, each race, sifted by the struggle for life, is considered to have preserved thosebest-endowed with mimetic powers and to have allowed the others tobecome extinct, thus gradually converting into a fixed characteristicwhat at first was but a casual acquisition. The Lark becameearth-coloured in order to hide himself from the eyes of the birds ofprey when pecking in the fields; the Common Lizard adopted a grass-greentint in order to blend with the foliage of the thickets in which helurks; the Cabbage-caterpillar guarded against the bird's beak by takingthe colour of the plant on which it feeds. And so with the rest. 

In my callow youth, these comparisons would have interested me: I wasjust ripe for that kind of science. In the evenings, on the straw of thethreshing-floor, we used to talk of the Dragon, the monster which, to inveigle people and snap them up with greater certainty, becameindistinguishable from a rock, the trunk of a tree, a bundle of twigs. Since those happy days of artless credulity, scepticism has chilled myimagination to some extent. By way of a parallel with the three exampleswhich I have quoted, I ask myself why the White Wagtail, who seeks hisfood in the furrows as does the Lark, has a white shirt-front surmountedby a magnificent black stock. This dress is one of those most easilypicked out at a distance against the rusty colour of the soil. Whencethis neglect to practise mimesis, 'protective mimicry'? He has everyneed of it, poor fellow, quite as much as his companion in the fields!

Why is the Eyed Lizard of Provence as green as the Common Lizard, considering that he shuns verdure and chooses as his haunt, in thebright sunlight, some chink in the naked rocks where not so much as atuft of moss grows? If, to capture his tiny prey, his brother in thecopses and the hedges thought it necessary to dissemble and consequentlyto dye his pearl-embroidered coat, how comes it that the denizen of thesun-blistered rocks persists in his blue-and-green colouring, which atonce betrays him against the whity-grey stone? Indifferent to mimicry, is he the less skilful Beetle-hunter on that account, is his racedegenerating? I have studied him sufficiently to be able to declare withpositive certainty that he continues to thrive both in numbers and invigour. 

Why has the Spurge-caterpillar adopted for its dress the gaudiestcolours and those which contrast most with the green of the leaves whichit frequents? Why does it flaunt its red, black and white in patchesclashing violently with one another? Would it not be worth its while tofollow the example of the Cabbage-caterpillar and imitate the verdure ofthe plant that feeds it? Has it no enemies? Of course it has: which ofus, animals and men, has not?

A string of these whys could be extended indefinitely. It would give meamusement, did my time permit me, to counter each example of protectivemimicry with a host of examples to the contrary. What manner of law isthis which has at least ninety-nine exceptions in a hundred cases? Poorhuman nature! There is a deceptive agreement between a few actualfacts and the theory which we are so foolishly ready to believe; andstraightway we interpret the facts in the light of the theory. In aspeck of the immense unknown we catch a glimpse of a phantom truth, ashadow, a will-o'-the-wisp; once the atom is explained, for better orworse, we imagine that we hold the explanation of the universe and allthat it contains; and we forthwith shout:

'The great law of Nature! Behold the infallible law!'

Meanwhile, the discordant facts, an innumerable host, clamour at thegates of the law, being unable to gain admittance. 

At the door of that infinitely restricted law clamour the great tribeof Golden Wasps, whose dazzling splendour, worthy of the wealth ofGolconda, clashes with the dingy colour of their haunts. To deceive theeyes of their bird-tyrants, the Swift, the Swallow, the Chat and theothers, these Chrysis-wasps, who glow like a carbuncle, like a nuggetin the midst of its dark veinstone, certainly do not adapt themselvesto the sand and the clay of their downs. The Green Grasshopper, we aretold, thought out a plan for gulling his enemies by identifying himselfin colour with the grass in which he dwells, whereas the Wasp, so richin instinct and strategy, allowed herself to be distanced in the race bythe dull-witted Locust! Rather than adapt herself as the other does, she persists in her incredible splendour, which betrays her from afar toevery insect-eater and in particular to the little Grey Lizard, who lieshungrily in wait for her on the old sun-tapestried walls. She remainsruby, emerald and turquoise amidst her grey environment; and her racethrives none the worse. 

The enemy that eats you is not the only one to be deceived; mimesis mustalso play its colour-tricks on him whom you have to eat. See the Tigerin his jungle, see the Praying Mantis on her green branch. (For thePraying Mantis, cf. "Social Life in the Insect World", by J. H. Fabre, translated by Bernard Miall: chapters 5 to 7. --Translator's Note. )Astute mimicry is even more necessary when the one to be duped is anamphitryon at whose cost the parasite's family is to be established. TheTachinae seem to declare as much: they are grey or greyish, of a colouras undecided as the dusty soil on which they cower while waiting for thearrival of the huntress laden with her capture. But they dissemble invain: the Bembex, the Philanthus and the others see them from above, before touching ground; they recognize them perfectly at a distance, despite their grey costume. And so they hover prudently above the burrowand strive, by sudden feints, to mislead the traitorous little Fly, who, on her side, knows her business too well to allow herself to be enticedaway or to leave the spot where the other is bound to return. No, athousand times no: clay-coloured though they be, the Tachinae have nobetter chance of attaining their ends than a host of other parasiteswhose clothing is not of grey frieze to match the locality frequented, as witness the glittering Chrysis, or the Melecta and the Crocisa, withtheir white spots on a black ground. 

We are also told that, the better to cozen his amphitryon, the parasiteadopts more or less the same shape and colouring; he turns himself, inappearance, into a harmless neighbour, a worker belonging to thesame guild. Instance the Psithyrus, who lives at the expense of theBumble-bee. But in what, if you please, does Parnopes carnea resemblethe Bembex into whose home she penetrates in her presence? In what doesthe Melecta resemble the Anthophora, who stands aside on her thresholdto let her pass? The difference of costume is most striking. TheMelecta's deep mourning has naught in common with the Anthophora'srusset coat. The Parnopes' emerald-and-carmine thorax possesses not theleast feature of resemblance with the black-and-yellow livery of theBembex. And this Chrysis also is a dwarf in comparison with the ardentNimrod who goes hunting Gad-flies. 

Besides, what a curious idea, to make the parasite's success depend upona more or less faithful likeness with the insect to be robbed! Why, theimitation would have exactly the opposite effect! With the exception ofthe Social Bees, who work at a common task, failure would be certain, for here, as among mankind, two of a trade never agree. An Osmia, an Anthophora, a Chalicodoma had better be careful not to poke anindiscreet head in at her neighbour's door: a sound drubbing would soonrecall her to a sense of the proprieties. She might easily find herselfwith a dislocated shoulder or a mangled leg in return for a simple visitwhich was perhaps prompted by no evil intention. Each for herself in herown stronghold. But let a parasite appear, meditating foul play: that'sa very different thing. She can wear the trappings of Harlequin or of achurch-beadle; she can be the Clerus-beetle, in wing-cases of vermilionwith blue trimmings, or the Dioxys-bee, with a red scarf across herblack abdomen, and the mistress of the house will let her have her way, or, if she become too pressing, will drive her off with a mere flickof her wing. With her, there is no serious fray, no fierce fight. TheBludgeon is reserved for the friend of the family. Now go and practiceyour mimesis in order to receive a welcome from the Anthophora or theChalicodoma! A few hours spent with the insects themselves will turn anyone into a hardened scoffer at these artless theories. 

To sum up, mimesis, in my eyes, is a piece of childishness. Were I notanxious to remain polite, I should say that it is sheer stupidity; andthe word would express my meaning better. The variety of combinations inthe domain of possible things is infinite. It is undeniable that, hereand there, cases occur in which the animal harmonizes with surroundingobjects. It would even be very strange if such cases were excluded fromactuality, since everything is possible. But these rare coincidences arefaced, under exactly similar conditions, by inconsistencies so stronglymarked and so numerous that, having frequency on their side, they ought, in all logic, to serve as the basis of the law. Here, one fact says yes;there, a thousand facts say no. To which evidence shall we lend an ear?If we only wish to bolster up a theory, it would be prudent to listento neither. The how and why escapes us; what we dignify with thepretentious title of a law is but a way of looking at things with ourmind, a very squint-eyed way, which we adopt for the requirements of ourcase. Our would-be laws contain but an infinitesimal shade of reality;often indeed they are but puffed out with vain imaginings. Such is thelaw of mimesis, which explains the Green Grasshopper by the green leavesin which this Locust settles and is silent as to the Crioceris, thatcoral-red Beetle who lives on the no less green leaves of the lily. 

And it is not only a mistaken interpretation: it is a clumsy pitfallin which novices allow themselves to be caught. Novices, did I say? Thegreatest experts themselves fall into the trap. One of our masters ofentomology did me the honour to visit my laboratory. I was showingmy collection of parasites. One of them, clad in black and yellow, attracted his attention. 

'This, ' said he, 'is obviously a parasite of the Wasps. '

Surprised at the statement, I interposed:

'By what signs do you know her?'

'Why look: it's the exact colouring of the Wasp, a mixture of black andyellow. It is a most striking case of mimesis. '

'Just so; nevertheless, our black-and-yellow friend is a parasite of theChalicodoma of the Walls, who has nothing in common, either in shape orcolour, with the Wasp. This is a Leucopsis, not one of whom enters theWasps' nest. '

'Then mimesis. . . ?'

'Mimesis is an illusion which we should do well to relegate tooblivion. '

And, with the evidence, a whole series of conclusive examples, in frontof him, my learned visitor admitted with a good grace that his firstconvictions were based on a most ludicrous foundation. 

A piece of advice to beginners: you will go wrong a thousand times foronce that you are right if, when anxious to obtain a premature sight ofthe probable habits of an insect, you take mimesis as your guide. Withmimesis above all, it is wise, when the law says that a thing is black, first to enquire whether it does not happen to be white. 

Let us go on to more serious subjects and enquire into parasitismitself, without troubling any longer about the costume of the parasite. According to etymology, a parasite is one who eats another's bread, onewho lives on the provisions of others. Entomology often alters this termfrom its real meaning. Thus it describes as parasites the Chrysis, theMutilla, the Anthrax, the Leucopsis, all of whom feed their family noton the provisions amassed by others, but on the very larvae which haveconsumed those provisions, their actual property. When the Tachinae havesucceeded in laying their eggs on the game warehoused by the Bembex, theburrower's home is invaded by real parasites, in the strict sense of theword. Around the heap of Gad-flies, collected solely for the children ofthe house, new guests force their way, numerous and hungry, and withoutthe least ceremony plunge into the thick of it. They sit down to a tablethat was not laid for them; they eat side by side with the lawfulowner; and this in such haste that he dies of starvation, though he isrespected by the teeth of the interlopers who have gorged themselves onhis portion. 

When the Melecta has substituted her egg for the Anthophora's, hereagain we see a real parasite settling in the usurped cell. The pile ofhoney laboriously gathered by the mother will not even be broken in uponby the nurseling for which it was intended. Another will profit by it, with none to say him nay. Tachinae and Melectae: those are the trueparasites, consumers of others' goods. 

Can we say as much of the Chrysis or the Mutilla? In no wise. TheScoliae, whose habits are known to us, are certainly not parasites. (Thehabits of the Scolia-wasp have been described in different essays notyet translated into English. --Translator's Note. ) No one will accusethem of stealing the food of others. Zealous workers, they seek and findunder ground the fat grubs on which their family will feed. They followthe chase by virtue of the same quality as the most renowned hunters, Cerceris, Sphex or Ammophila; only, instead of removing the game to aspecial lair, they leave it where it is, down in the burrow. Homelesspoachers, they let their venison be consumed on the spot where it iscaught. 

In what respect do the Mutilla, the Chrysis, the Leucopsis, the Anthraxand so many others differ, in their way of living, from the Scolia? Itseems to me, in none. See for yourselves. By an artifice that variesaccording to the mother's talent, their grubs, either in the germ-stageor newly-born, are brought into touch with the victim that is to feedthem: an unwounded victim, for most of them are without a sting; a livevictim, but steeped in the torpor of the coming transformations and thusdelivered without defence to the grub that is to devour it. 

With them, as with the Scoliae, meals are made on the spot on gamelegitimately acquired by indefatigable battues or by patient stalkingin which all the rules have been observed; only, the animal hunted isdefenceless and does not need to be laid low with a dagger-thrust. Toseek and find for one's larder a torpid prey incapable of resistance is, if you like, less meritorious than heroically to stab the strong-jawedRose-chafer or Rhinoceros-beetle; but since when has the title ofsportsman been denied to him who blows out the brains of a harmlessRabbit, instead of waiting without flinching for the furious chargeof the Wild Boar and driving his hunting-knife into him behind hisshoulder? Besides, if the actual assault is without danger, theapproach is attended with a difficulty that increases the merit of thesesecond-rate poachers. The coveted game is invisible. It is confined inthe stronghold of a cell and moreover protected by the surrounding wallof a cocoon. Of what prowess must not the mother be capable to determinethe exact spot at which it lies and to lay her egg on its side or atleast close by? For these reasons, I boldly number the Chrysis, theMutilla and their rivals among the hunters and reserve the ignobletitle of parasites for the Tachina, the Melecta, the Crocisa, theMeloe-beetle, in short, for all those who feed on the provisions ofothers. 

All things considered, is ignoble the right epithet to apply toparasitism? No doubt, in the human race, the idler who feeds at otherpeople's tables is contemptible at all points; but must the animal bearthe burden of the indignation inspired by our own vices? Our parasites, our scurvy parasites, live at their neighbour's expense: the animalnever; and this changes the whole aspect of the question. I know ofno instance, not one, excepting man, of parasites who consume theprovisions hoarded by a worker of the same species. There may be, hereand there, a few cases of larceny, of casual pillage among hoardersbelonging to the same trade: that I am quite ready to admit, but it doesnot affect things. What would be really serious and what I formallydeny is that, in the same zoological species, there should be some whopossessed the attribute of living at the expense of the rest. In vain doI consult my memory and my notes: my long entomological career doesnot furnish me with a solitary example of such a misdeed as that of aninsect leading the life of a parasite upon its fellows. 

When the Chalicodoma of the Sheds works, in her thousands, at herCyclopean edifice, each has her own home, a sacred home where not oneof the tumultuous swarm, except the proprietress, dreams of takinga mouthful of honey. It is as though there were a neighbourlyunderstanding to respect the others' rights. Moreover, if some heedlessone mistakes her cell and so much as alights on the rim of a cup thatdoes not belong to her, forthwith the owner appears, admonishes herseverely and soon calls her to order. But, if the store of honey is theestate of some deceased Bee, or of some wanderer unduly prolonging herabsence, then--and then alone--a kinswoman seizes upon it. The goodswere waste property, which she turns to account; and it is a very propereconomy. The other Bees and Wasps behave likewise: never, I say never, do we find among them an idler assiduously planning the conquest of herneighbour's possessions. No insect is a parasite on its own species. 

What then is parasitism, if one must look for it among animals ofdifferent races? Life in general is but a vast brigandage. Naturedevours herself; matter is kept alive by passing from one stomach intoanother. At the banquet of life, each is in turn the guest and the dish;the eater of to-day becomes the eaten of tomorrow; hodie tibi, crasmihi. Everything lives on that which lives or has lived; everything isparasitism. Man is the great parasite, the unbridled thief of all thatis fit to eat. He steals the milk from the Lamb, he steals the honeyfrom the children of the Bee, even as the Melecta pilfers the pottageof the Anthophora's sons. The two cases are similar. Is it the vice ofindolence? No, it is the fierce law which for the life of the one exactsthe death of the other. 

In this implacable struggle of devourers and devoured, of pillagers andpillaged, of robbers and robbed, the Melecta deserves no more than wethe title of ignoble; in ruining the Anthophora, she is but imitatingman in one detail, man who is the infinite source of destruction. Herparasitism is no blacker than ours: she has to feed her offspring;and, possessing no harvesting-tools, ignorant besides of the art ofharvesting, she uses the provisions of others who are better endowedwith implements and talents. In the fierce riot of empty bellies, shedoes what she can with the gifts at her disposal. 

CHAPTER 9. THE THEORY OF PARASITISM. 

The Melecta does what she can with the gifts at her disposal. I shouldleave it at that, if I had not to take into consideration a grave chargebrought against her. She is accused of having lost, for want of use andthrough laziness, the workman's tools with which, so we are told, shewas originally endowed. Finding it to her advantage to do nothing, bringing up her family free of expense, to the detriment of others, sheis alleged to have gradually inspired her race with an abhorrence forwork. The harvesting-tools, less and less often employed, dwindledand perished as organs having no function; the species changed intoa different one; and finally idleness turned the honest worker of theoutset into a parasite. This brings us to a very simple and seductivetheory of parasitism, worthy to be discussed with all respect. Let usset it forth. 

Some mother, nearing the end of her labours and in a hurry to lay hereggs, found, let us suppose, some convenient cells provisioned by herfellows. There was no time for nest-building and foraging; if she wouldsave her family, she must perforce appropriate the fruit of another'stoil. Thus relieved of the tedium and fatigue of work, freed of everycare but that of laying eggs, she left a progeny which duly inheritedthe maternal slothfulness and handed this down in its turn, in a moreand more accentuated form, as generation followed on generation; for thestruggle for life made this expeditious way of establishing yourself oneof the most favourable conditions for the success of the offspring. Atthe same time, the organs of work, left unemployed, became atrophied anddisappeared, while certain details of shape and colouring were modifiedmore or less, so as to adapt themselves to the new circumstances. Thusthe parasitic race was definitely established. 

This race, however, was not too greatly transformed for us to be able, in certain cases, to trace its origin. The parasite has retained morethan one feature of those industrious ancestors. So, for instance, the Psithyrus is extremely like the Bumble-bee, whose parasite anddescendant she is. The Stelis preserves the ancestral characteristics ofthe Anthidium; the Coelioxys-bee recalls the Leaf-cutter. 

Thus speak the evolutionists, with a wealth of evidence derived not onlyfrom correspondence in general appearance, but also from similarity inthe most minute particulars. Nothing is small: I am as much convinced ofthat as any man; and I admire the extraordinary precision of the detailsfurnished as a basis for the theory. But am I convinced? Rightly orwrongly, my turn of mind does not hold minutiae of structure in greatfavour: a joint of the palpi leaves me rather cold; a tuft of bristlesdoes not appear to me an unanswerable argument. I prefer to question thecreature direct and to let it describe its passions, its mode of life, its aptitudes. Having heard its evidence, we shall see what becomes ofthe theory of parasitism. 

Before calling upon it to speak, why should I not say what I have on mymind? And mark me, first of all, I do not like that laziness which issaid to favour the animal's prosperity. I have also believed and I stillpersist in believing that activity alone strengthens the present andensures the future both of animals and men. To act is to live; to workis to go forward. The energy of a race is measured by the aggregate ofits action. 

No, I do not like it at all, this idleness so much commended of science. We have quite enough of these zoological brutalities: man, the son ofthe Ape; duty, a foolish prejudice; conscience, a lure for the simple;genius, neurosis; patriotism, jingo heroics; the soul, a product ofprotoplasmic energies; God, a puerile myth. Let us raise the war-whoopand go out for scalps; we are here only to devour one another; thesummum bonum is the Chicago packer's dollar-chest! Enough, quite enoughof that, without having transformism next to break down the sacred lawof work. I will not hold it responsible for our moral ruin; it has nota sturdy enough shoulder to effect such a breach; but still it has doneits worst. 

No, once more, I do not like those brutalities which, denying all thatgives some dignity to our wretched life, stifle our horizon under anextinguisher of matter. Oh, don't come and forbid me to think, though itwere but a dream, of a responsible human personality, of conscience, ofduty, of the dignity of labour! Everything is linked together: if theanimal is better off, as regards both itself and its race, for doingnothing and exploiting others, why should man, its descendant, show greater scruples? The principle that idleness is the mother ofprosperity would carry us far indeed. I have said enough on my ownaccount; I will call upon the animals themselves, more eloquent than I. 

Are we so very sure that parasitic habits come from a love of inaction?Did the parasite become what he is because he found it excellent todo nothing? Is repose so great an advantage to him that he abjured hisancient customs in order to obtain it? Well, since I have been studyingthe Bee who endows her family with the property of others, I have notyet seen anything in her that points to slothfulness. On the contrary, the parasite leads a laborious life, harder than that of the worker. Watch her on a slope blistered by the sun. How busy she is, howanxious! How briskly she covers every inch of the radiant expanse, howindefatigable she is in her endless quests; in her visits, which aregenerally fruitless! Before coming upon a nest that suits her, she hasdived a hundred times into cavities of no value, into galleries notyet victualled. And then, however kindly her host, the parasite is notalways well received in the hostelry. No, it is not all roses in hertrade. The expenditure of time and labour which she finds necessary inorder to house an egg may easily equal or even exceed that of the workerin building her cell and filling it with honey. That industrious one hasregular and continuous work, an excellent condition for success in heregg-laying; the other has a thankless and precarious task, at themercy of a thousand accidents which endanger the great undertaking ofinstalling the eggs. One has only to watch the prolonged hesitation ofa Coelioxys seeking for the Leaf-cutters' cells to recognize thatthe usurpation of another's nest is not effected without seriousdifficulties. If she turned parasite in order to make the rearing ofher offspring easier and more prosperous, certainly she was veryill-inspired. Instead of rest, hard work; instead of a flourishingfamily, a meagre progeny. 

To generalities, which are necessarily vague, we will add some precisefacts. A certain Stelis (Stelis nasuta, LATR. ) is a parasite of theMason-bee of the Walls. When the Chalicodoma has finished buildingher dome of cells upon her pebble, the parasite appears, makes a longinspection of the outside of the home and proposes, puny as she is, to introduce her eggs into this cement fortress. Everything is mostcarefully closed: a layer of rough plaster, at least two-fifths of aninch thick, entirely covers the central accumulation of cells, whichare each of them sealed with a thick mortar plug. And it is the honeyof these well-guarded chambers that has to be reached by piercing a wallalmost as hard as rock. 

The parasite pluckily sets to; the idler becomes a glutton for work. Atom by atom, she perforates the general enclosure and scoops out ashaft just sufficient for her passage; she reaches the lid of the celland gnaws it until the coveted provisions appear in sight. It is a slowand painful process, in which the feeble Stelis wears herself out, forthe mortar is much the same as Roman cement in hardness. I myself finda difficulty in breaking it with the point of my knife. What patienteffort, then, the task requires from the parasite, with her tinypincers!

I do not know exactly how long the Stelis takes to make herentrance-shaft, as I have never had the opportunity or rather thepatience to follow the work from start to finish; but what I do know isthat a Chalicodoma of the Walls, incomparably larger and stronger thanthe parasite, when demolishing before my eyes the lid of a cell sealedonly the day before, was unable to complete her undertaking in oneafternoon. I had to come to her assistance in order to discover, before the end of the day, the object of her housebreaking. When theMason-bee's mortar has once set, its resistance is that of stone. Nowthe Stelis has not only to pierce the lid of the honey-store; she mustalso pierce the general casing of the nest. What a time it must take herto get through such a task, a gigantic one for her poor tools!

It is done at last, after infinite labour. The honey appears. The Stelisslips through and, on the surface of the provisions, side by sidewith the Chalicodoma's eggs, the number varying from time to time. Thevictuals will be the common property of all the new arrivals, whetherthe son of the house or strangers. 

The violated dwelling cannot remain as it is, exposed to marauders fromwithout; the parasite must herself wall up the breach which she hascontrived. The quondam housebreaker becomes a builder. At the footof the pebble, the Stelis collects a little of that red earth whichcharacterizes our stony plateaus grown with lavender and thyme; shemakes it into mortar by wetting it with saliva; and with the pelletsthus prepared she fills up the entrance-shaft, displaying all the careand art of a regular master-mason. Only, the work clashes in colour withthe Chalicodoma's. The Bee goes and gathers her cementing-powder on theadjoining high-road, the metal of which consists of broken flint-stones, and very seldom uses the red earth under the pebble supporting thenest. This choice is apparently dictated by the fact that the chemicalproperties of the former are more likely to produce a solid structure. The lime of the road, mixed with saliva, yields a harder cement than redclay would do. At any rate, the Chalicodoma's nest is more or lesswhite because of the source of its materials. When a red speck, a fewmillimetres wide, appears on this pale background, it is a sure signthat a Stelis has been that way. Open the cell that lies under the redstain: we shall find the parasite's numerous family established there. The rusty spot is an infallible indication that the dwelling has beenviolated: at least, it is so in my neighbourhood, where the soil is as Ihave described. 

We see the Stelis, therefore, at first a rabid miner, using hermandibles against the rock; next a kneader of clay and a plastererrestoring broken ceilings. Her trade does not seem one of the leastarduous. Now what did she do before she took to parasitism? Judging fromher appearance, the transformists tell us that she was an Anthidium, that is to say, she used to gather the soft cotton-wool from the drystalks of the lanate plants and fashion it into wallets, in which toheap up the pollen-dust which she gleaned from the flowers by means ofa brush carried on her abdomen. Or else, springing from a genus akinto the cotton-workers, she used to build resin partitions in the spiralstairway of a dead Snail. Such was the trade driven by her ancestors. 

Really! So, to avoid slow and painful work, to achieve an easy life, togive herself the leisure favourable to the settlement of her family, the erstwhile cotton-presser or collector of resin-drops took to gnawinghardened cement! She who once sipped the nectar of flowers made up hermind to chew concrete! Why, the poor wretch toils at her filing like agalley-slave! She spends more time in ripping up a cell than it wouldtake her to make a cotton wallet and fill it with food. If she reallymeant to progress, to do better in her own interest and that of herfamily, by abandoning the delicate occupations of the old days, we mustconfess that she has made a strange mistake. The mistake would be nogreater if fingers accustomed to fancy-weaving were to lay aside velvetand silk and proceed to handle the quarryman's blocks or to break stoneson the roadside. 

No, the animal does not commit the folly of voluntarily embittering itslot; it does not, in obedience to the promptings of idleness, give upone condition to embrace another and a more irksome; should it blunderfor once, it will not inspire its posterity with a wish to persevere ina costly delusion. No, the Stelis never abandoned the delicate art ofcotton-weaving to break down walls and to grind cement, a class of workfar too unattractive to efface the memory of the joys of harvesting amidthe flowers. Indolence has not evolved her from an Anthidium. She hasalways been what she is to-day: a patient artificer in her own line, asteady worker at the task that has fallen to her share. 

That hurried mother who first, in remote ages, broke into the abodeof her fellows to secure a home for her eggs found this unscrupulousmethod, so you tell us, very favourable to the success of her race, byvirtue of its economy of time and trouble. The impression left by thisnew policy was so profound that heredity bequeathed it to posterity, in ever-increasing proportions, until at last parasitic habits becamedefinitely fixed. The Chalicodoma of the Sheds, followed by theThree-horned Osmia, will teach us what to think of this conjecture. 

I have described in an earlier chapter my installation ofChalicodoma-hives against the walls of a porch facing the south. Here, on a level with my head, placed so that they can easily be observed, hang some tiles removed from the neighbouring roofs in winter, togetherwith their enormous nests and their occupants. Every May, for five orsix years in succession, I have assiduously watched the works ofmy Mason-bees. From the mass of my notes on the subject I take thefollowing experiments which bear upon the matter under discussion. 

Long ago, when I used to scatter a handful of Chalicodomae some way fromhome, in order to study their capacity for finding their nest again, I noticed that, if they were too long absent, the laggards found theircells closed on their return. Neighbours had taken the opportunity tolay their eggs there, after finishing the building and stocking it withprovisions. The abandoned property benefited another. On realizingthe usurpation, the Bee returning from her long journey soon consoledherself for the mishap. She began to break the seals of some cell orother, adjoining her own; the rest let her have her way, beingdoubtless too busy with their present labours to seek a quarrel with thefreebooter. As soon as she had destroyed the lid, the Bee, with a sortof feverish haste that burned to repay theft by theft, did a littlebuilding, did a little victualling, as though to resume the thread ofher occupations, destroyed the egg in being, laid her own and closedthe cell again. Here was a touch of nature that deserved carefulexamination. 

At eleven o'clock in the morning, when the work is at its height, I markhalf-a-score of Chalicodomae with different colours, to distinguish themfrom one another. Some are occupied with building, others are disgorginghoney. I mark the corresponding cells in the same way. As soon as themarks are quite dry, I catch the ten Bees, place them singly in screwsof paper and shut them all in a box until the next morning. Aftertwenty-four hours' captivity, the prisoners are released. Duringtheir absence, their cells have disappeared under a layer of recentstructures; or, if still exposed to view, they are closed and othershave made use of them. 

As soon as they are free, the ten Bees, with one exception, return totheir respective tiles. They do more than this, so accurate is theirmemory, despite the confusion resulting from a prolonged incarceration:they return to the cell which they have built, the beloved stolen cell;they minutely explore the outside of it, or at least what lies nearestto it, if the cell has disappeared under the new structures. In caseswhere the home is not henceforward inaccessible, it is at least occupiedby a strange egg and the door is securely fastened. To this reverse offortune the ousted ones retort with the brutal lex talionis: an egg foran egg, a cell for a cell. You've stolen my house; I'll steal yours. And, without much hesitation, they proceed to force the lid of a cellthat suits them. Sometimes they recover possession of their own home, ifit is possible to get into it; sometimes and more frequently theyseize upon some one else's, even at a considerable distance from theiroriginal dwelling. 

Patiently they gnaw the mortar lid. As the general rough-cast coveringall the cells is not applied until the end of the work, all that theyneed do is to demolish the lid, a hard and wearisome task, but notbeyond the strength of their mandibles. They therefore attack the door, the cement disk, and reduce it to dust. The criminal is allowed to carryout her nefarious designs without the slightest interference or protestfrom any of her neighbours, though these must necessarily include thechief party interested. The Bee is as forgetful of her cell of yesterdayas she is jealous of her actual cell. To her the present is everything;the past means nothing; and the future means no more. And so thepopulation of the tile leave the breakers of doors to do their businessin peace; none hastens to the defence of a home that might well be herown. How differently things would happen if the cell were still on thestocks! But it dates back to yesterday, to the day before; and no onegives it another thought. 

It's done: the lid is demolished; access is free. For some time, the Beestands bending over the cell, her head half-buried in it, as though incontemplation. She goes away, she returns undecidedly; at last she makesup her mind. The egg is snapped up from the surface of the honey andflung on the rubbish-heap with no more ceremony than if the Bee wereridding the house of a bit of dirt. I have witnessed this hideous crimeagain and yet again; I confess to having repeatedly provoked it. Inhousing her egg, the Mason-bee displays a brutal indifference to thefate of her neighbour's egg. 

I see some of them afterwards busy provisioning, disgorging honey andbrushing pollen into the cell already completely provisioned; I see somemasoning a little at the orifice, or at least laying on a few trowels ofmortar. It seems as if the Bee, although the victuals and the buildingare just as they should be, were resuming the work at the point at whichshe left it twenty-four hours before. Lastly, the egg is laid and theopening closed up. Of my captives, one, less patient than the rest, rejects the slow process of eating away the cover and decides in favourof robbery with violence, on the principle that might is right. Shedislodges the owner of a half-stocked cell, keeps good watch for along time on the threshold of the home and, when she feels herselfthe mistress of the house, goes on with the provisioning. I follow theousted proprietress with my eyes. I see her seize upon a closed cellby breaking into it, behaving in all respects like my imprisonedChalicodomae. 

The whole occurrence was too significant to be left without furtherconfirmation. I repeated the experiment, therefore, almost every year, always with the same success. I can only add that, among the Bees placedby my artifices under the necessity of making up for lost time, a feware of a more easy-going temperament. I see some building anew, asif nothing out of the way had happened; others--this is a very rarecourse--going to settle on another tile, as though to avoid a societyof thieves; and lastly a few who bring pellets of mortar and zealouslyfinish the lid of their own cell, although it contains a strange egg. However, housebreaking is the usual thing. 

One more detail not without value: it is not necessary for you tointervene and imprison Mason-bees for a time in order to witness theacts of violence which I have described. If you follow the work of theswarm assiduously, you may occasionally find a surprise awaiting you. AMason-bee will appear and, for no reason known to you, break open a doorand lay her egg in the violated cell. From what goes before, I look uponthe Bee as a laggard, kept away from the workyard by an accident, orelse carried to a distance by a gust of wind. On returning after anabsence of some duration, she finds her place taken, her cell used byanother. The victim of an usurper's villainy, like the prisoners in mypaper screws, she behaves as they do and indemnifies herself for herloss by breaking into another's home. 

Lastly, it was a matter of learning the behaviour, after their act ofviolence, of the Masons who have smashed in a door, brutally expelledthe egg within and replaced it by one of their own laying. When the lidis repaired to look as good as new and everything restored to order, will they continue their burglarious ways and exterminate the eggs ofothers to make room for their own? By no means. Revenge, that pleasureof the gods and perhaps also of Bees, is satisfied after one cell hasbeen ripped open. All anger is appeased when the egg for which so muchwork has been done is safely housed. Henceforth, both prisoners andstray laggards resume their ordinary labours, indifferently with therest. They build honestly, they provision honestly, nor meditate furtherevil. The past is quite forgotten until a fresh disaster occurs. 

To return to the parasites: a mother chanced to find herself themistress of another's nest. She took advantage of this to entrusther egg to it. This expeditious method, so easy for the mother and sofavourable to the success of her offspring, made such an impression onher that she transmitted the maternal indolence to her posterity. Thusthe worker gradually became transformed into a parasite. 

Capital! The thing goes like clockwork, as long as we have only to putour ideas on paper. But let us just consult the facts, if you don'tmind; before arguing about probabilities, let us look into things asthey are. Here is the Mason-bee of the Sheds teaching us something verycurious. To smash the lid of a cell that does not belong to her, tothrow the egg out of doors and put her own in its place is a practicewhich she has followed since time began. There is no need of myinterference to make her commit burglary: she commits it of her ownaccord, when her rights are prejudiced as the result of a too-longabsence. Ever since her race has been kneading cement, she has known thelaw of retaliation. Countless ages, such as the evolutionists require, have made her adopt forcible usurpation as an inveterate habit. Moreover, robbery is so incomparably easy for the mother. No more cementto scratch up with her mandibles on the hard ground, no more mortar toknead, no more clay walls to build, no more pollen to gather on hundredsand hundreds of journeys. All is ready, board and lodging. Never was abetter opportunity for allowing one's self a good time. There isnothing against it. The others, the workers, are imperturbable in theirgood-humour. Their outraged cells leave them profoundly indifferent. There are no brawls to fear, no protests. Now or never is the moment totread the primrose path. 

Besides, your progeny will be all the better for it. You can choose thewarmest and wholesomest spots; you can multiply your laying-operationsby devoting to them all the time that you would have to spend on irksomeoccupations. If the impression produced by the violent seizure ofanother's property is strong enough to be handed down by heredity, howdeep should be the impression of the actual moment when the Mason-beeis in the first flush of success! The precious advantage is fresh in thememory, dating from that very instant; the mother has but to continuein order to create a method of installation favourable in the highestdegree to her and hers. Come, poor Bee! Throw aside your exhaustinglabours, follow the evolutionists' advice and, as you have the means atyour disposal, become a parasite!

But no, having effected her little revenge, the builder returns toher masonry, the gleaner to her gleaning, with unquenchable zeal. Sheforgets the crime committed in a moment of anger and takes good care notto hand down any tendency towards idleness to her offspring. She knowstoo well that activity is life, that work is the world's great joy. Whatmyriads of cells has she not broken open since she has been building;what magnificent opportunities, all so clear and conclusive, has shenot had to emancipate herself from drudgery! Nothing could convince her:born to work, she persists in an industrious life. She might at leasthave produced an offshoot, a race of housebreakers, who would invadecells by demolishing doors. The Stelis does something of the kind; butwho would think of proclaiming a relationship between the Chalicodomaand her? The two have nothing in common. I call for a scion of theMason-bee of the Sheds who shall live by the art of breaking throughceilings. Until they show me one, the theorists will only make me smilewhen they talk to me of erstwhile workers relinquishing their trade tobecome parasitic sluggards. 

I also call, with no less insistence, for a descendant of theThree-horned Osmia, a descendant given to demolishing party-walls. Iwill describe later how I managed to make a whole swarm of these Osmiaebuild their nests on the table in my study, in glass tubes that enabledme to see the inmost secrets of the work of the Bee. (Cf. "Bramble-beesand Others", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira deMattos: chapters 1 to 7. --Translator's Note. ) For three or four weeks, each Osmia is scrupulously faithful to her tube, which is laboriouslyfilled with a set of chambers divided by earthen partitions. Marks ofdifferent colours painted on the thorax of the workers enable meto recognize individuals in the crowd. Each crystal gallery is theexclusive property of one Osmia; no other enters it, builds in it orhoards in it. If, through heedlessness, through momentary forgetfulnessof her own house in the tumult of the city, some neighbour so much ascomes and looks in at the door, the owner soon puts her to flight. Nosuch indiscretion is tolerated. Every Bee has her home and every homeits Bee. 

All goes well until just before the end of the work. The tubes are thenclosed at the orifice with a thick plug of earth; nearly the whole swarmhas disappeared; there remain on the spot a score of tatterdemalions inthreadbare fleeces, worn out by a month's hard toil. These laggards havenot finished their laying. There is no lack of unoccupied tubes, for Itake care to remove some of those which are full and to replace them byothers that have not yet been used. Very few of the Bees decide to takepossession of these new homes, which differ in no particular from theearlier ones; and even then they build only a small number of cells, which are often mere attempts at partitions. 

They want something different: a nest belonging to some one else. Theybore through the stopper of the inhabited tubes, a work of no greatdifficulty, for we have here not the hard cement of the Chalicodoma, buta simple lid of dried mud. When the entrance is cleared, a cell appears, with its store of provisions and its egg, with her brutal mandibles; sherips it open and goes and flings it away. She does worse: she eats iton the spot. I had to witness this horror many times over before I couldaccept it as a fact. Note that the egg devoured may very well containthe criminal's own offspring. Imperiously swayed by the needs of herpresent family, the Osmia puts her past family entirely out of her mind. 

Having perpetrated this child-murder, the depraved creature does alittle provisioning. They all experience the same necessity to gobackwards in the sequence of actions in order to pick up the thread oftheir interrupted occupations. Her next work is to lay her egg and thenshe conscientiously restores the demolished lid. 

The havoc can be more sweeping still. One of these laggards is notsatisfied with a single cell; she needs two, three, four. To reachthe most remote, the Osmia wrecks all those which come before it. The partitions are broken down, the eggs eaten or thrown away, theprovisions swept outside and often even carried to a distance in greatlumps. Covered with dust from the loose plaster of the demolition, floured all over with the rifled pollen, sticky with the contents of themangled eggs, the Osmia, while at her brigand's work, is altered beyondrecognition. Once the place is cleared, everything resumes its normalcourse. Provisions are laboriously brought to take the place of thosewhich have been thrown away; eggs are laid, one on each heap of food;the partitions are built up again; and the massive plug sealing thewhole structure is made as good as new. 

Crimes of this kind recur so often that I am obliged to interfere andplace in safety the nests which I wish to keep intact. And nothing asyet explains this brigandage, bursting forth at the end of the work likea moral epidemic, like a frenzied delirium. I should say nothing if thesite were lacking; but the tubes are there, close by, empty and quitefit to receive the eggs. The Osmia refuses them, she prefers to plunder. Is it from weariness, from a distaste for work after a period of fierceactivity? Not at all; for, when a row of cells has been stripped of itscontents, after the ravage and waste, she has to come back to ordinarywork, with all its burdens. The labour is not reduced; it is increased. It would pay the Bee infinitely better, if she wants to continueher laying, to make her home in an unoccupied tube. The Osmia thinksdifferently. Her reasons for acting as she does escape me. Can therebe ill-conditioned characters among her, characters that delight in aneighbour's ruin? There are among men. 

In the privacy of her native haunts, the Osmia, I have no doubt, behavesas in my crystal galleries. Towards the end of the building-operations, she violates others' dwellings. By keeping to the first cell, which itis not necessary to empty in order to reach the next, she can utilizethe provisions on the spot and shorten to that extent the longest partof her work. As usurpations of this kind have had ample time to becomeinveterate, to become inbred in the race, I ask for a descendant of theOsmia who eats her grandmother's egg in order to establish her own egg. 

This descendant I shall not be shown; but I may be told that she is inprocess of formation. The outrages which I have described are preparinga future parasite. The transformists dogmatize about the past anddogmatize about the future, but as seldom as possible talk to us aboutthe present. Transformations have taken place, transformations will takeplace; the pity of it is that they are not actually taking place. Of thethree tenses, one is lacking, the very one which directly interests usand which alone is clear of the incubus of theory. This silence aboutthe present does not please me overmuch, scarcely more than the famouspicture of "The Crossing of the Red Sea" painted for a village chapel. The artist had put upon the canvas a broad ribbon of brightest scarlet;and that was all. 

'Yes, that's the Red Sea, ' said the priest, examining the masterpiecebefore paying for it. 'That's the Red Sea, right enough; but where arethe Israelites?'

'They have passed, ' replied the painter. 

'And the Egyptians?'

'They are on the way. '

Transformations have passed, transformations are on the way. For mercy'ssake, cannot they show us transformations in the act? Must the facts ofthe past and the facts of the future necessarily exclude the facts ofthe present? I fail to understand. 

I call for a descendant of the Chalicodoma and a descendant of the Osmiawho have robbed their neighbours with gusto, when occasion offered, since the origin of their respective races, and who are workingindustriously to create a parasite happy in doing nothing. Have theysucceeded? No. Will they succeed? Yes, people maintain. For the moment, nothing. The Osmiae and Chalicodomae of to-day are what they were whenthe first trowel of cement or mud was mixed. Then how many ages does ittake to form a parasite? Too many, I fear, for us not to be discouraged. 

If the sayings of the theorists are well-founded, going on strike andliving by shifts was not always enough to assure parasitism. In certaincases, the animal must have had to change its diet, to pass from liveprey to vegetarian fare, which would entirely subvert its most essentialcharacteristics. What should we say to the Wolf giving up mutton andbrowsing on grass, in obedience to the dictates of idleness? The boldestwould shrink from such an absurd assumption. And yet transformism leadsus straight to it. 

Here is an example: in July, I split some bramble-stems in which Osmiatridentata has built her nests. In the long series of cells, the loweralready hold the Osmia's cocoons, while the upper contain the larvawhich has nearly finished consuming its provisions and the topmostshow the victuals untouched, with the Osmia's egg upon them. It is acylindrical egg, rounded at both extremities, of a transparent whiteand measuring four to five millimetres in length. (. 156 to. 195inch. --Translator's Note. ) It lies slantwise, one end of it resting onthe food and the other sticking up at some distance above the honey. Now, by multiplying my visits to the fresh cells, I have on severaloccasions made a very valuable discovery. On the free end of the Osmia'segg, another egg is fixed; an egg quite different in shape, white andtransparent like the first, but much smaller and narrower, blunt atone end and tapering into a rather sharp point at the other. It istwo millimetres long by half a millimetre wide. (. 078 and. 019inch. --Translator's Note. ) It is undeniably the egg of a parasite, aparasite which compels my attention by its curious method of installingits family. 

It opens before the Osmia's egg. The tiny grub, as soon as it is born, begins to drain the rival egg, of which it occupied the top part, highup above the honey. The extermination soon becomes perceptible. You cansee the Osmia's egg turning muddy, losing its brilliancy, becoming limpand wrinkled. In twenty-four hours, it is nothing but an empty sheath, a crumpled bit of skin. All competition is now removed; the parasite isthe master of the house. The young grub, when demolishing the egg, wasactive enough: it explored the dangerous thing which had to be gotrid of quickly, it raised its head to select and multiply theattacking-points. Now, lying at full length on the surface of the honey, it no longer shifts its position; but the undulations of the digestivecanal betray its greedy absorption of the Osmia's store of food. Theprovisions are finished in a fortnight and the cocoon is woven. It isa fairly firm ovoid, of a very dark-brown colour, two characteristicswhich at once distinguish it from the Osmia's pale, cylindrical cocoon. The hatching takes place in April or May. The puzzle is solved atlast: the Osmia's parasite is a Wasp called the Spotted Sapyga (Sapygapunctata, V. L. )

Now where are we to class this Wasp, a true parasite in the strictsense of the word, that is to say, a consumer of others' provisions. Hergeneral appearance and her structure make it clear to any eye more orless familiar with entomological shapes that she belongs to a speciesakin to that of the Scoliae. Moreover, the masters of classification, soscrupulous in their comparison of characteristics, agree in placing theSapygae immediately after the Scoliae and a little before the Mutillae. The Scoliae feed their grubs on prey; so do the Mutillae. The Osmia'sparasite, therefore, if it really derives from a transformed ancestor, is descended from a flesh-eater, though it is now an eater of honey. TheWolf does more than become a Sheep: he turns himself into a sweet-tooth. 

'You will never get an apple-tree out of an acorn, ' Franklin tells us, with that homely common-sense of his. 

In this case, the passion for jam must have sprung from a love ofvenison. Any theory might well be deficient in balance when it leads tosuch vagaries as this. 

I should have to write a volume if I would go on setting forth mydoubts. I have said enough for the moment. Man, the insatiable enquirer, hands down from age to age his questions about the whys and whereforesof origins. Answer follows answer, is proclaimed true to-day andrecognized as false tomorrow; and the goddess Isis continues veiled. 

CHAPTER 10. THE TRIBULATIONS OF THE MASON-BEE. 

To illustrate the methods of those who batten on others' goods, theplunderers who know no rest till they have wrought the destruction ofthe worker, it would be difficult to find a better instance than thetribulations suffered by the Chalicodoma of the Walls. The Masonwho builds on the pebbles may fairly boast of being an industriousworkwoman. Throughout the month of May, we see her black squads, in thefull heat of the sun, digging with busy teeth in the mortar-quarry ofthe road hard by. So great is her zeal that she hardly moves out ofthe way of the passer-by; more than one allows herself to be crushedunderfoot, absorbed as she is in collecting her cement. 

The hardest and driest spots, which still retain the compactnessimparted by the steam-roller, are the favourite veins; and the work ofmaking the pellet is slow and painful. It is scraped up atom by atom;and, by means of saliva, turned into mortar then and there. When it isall well kneaded and there is enough to make a load, the Mason sets offwith an impetuous flight, in a straight line, and makes for her pebble, a few hundred paces away. The trowel of fresh mortar is soon spent, either in adding another storey to the turret-shaped edifice, or incementing into the wall lumps of gravel that give it greater solidity. The journeys in search of cement are renewed until the structure attainsthe regulation height. Without a moment's rest, the Bee returns ahundred times to the stone-yard, always to the one spot recognized asexcellent. 

The victuals are now collected: honey and flower-dust. If there is apink carpet of sainfoin anywhere in the neighbourhood, 'tis there thatthe Mason goes plundering by preference, though it cost her a fourhundred yards' journey every time. Her crop swells with honeyedexudations, her belly is floured with pollen. Back to the cell, whichslowly fills; and back straightway to the harvest-field. And all daylong, with not a sign of weariness, the same activity is maintained aslong as the sun is high enough. When it is late, if the house is notyet closed, the Bee retires to her cell to spend the night there, head downwards, tip of her abdomen outside, a habit foreign to theChalicodoma of the Sheds. Then and then alone the Mason rests; but itis a rest that is in a sense equivalent to work, for, thus placed, sheblocks the entrance to the honey-store and defends her treasure againsttwilight or night marauders. 

Being anxious to form some estimate of the total distance covered by theBee in the construction and provisioning of a single cell, I counted thenumber of steps from a nest to the road where the mortar was mixed andfrom the same nest to the sainfoin-field where the harvest was gathered. I took such note as my patience permitted of the journeys made in bothdirections; and, completing these data with a comparison between thework done and that which remained to do, I arrived at nine and a halfmiles as the result of the total travelling. Of course, I give thisfigure only as a rough calculation; greater precision would havedemanded more perseverance than I can boast. 

Such as it is, the result, which is probably under the actual figure inmany cases, is of a kind that gives us a vivid idea of the Mason-bee'sactivity. The complete nest will comprise about fifteen cells. Moreover, the heap of cells will be coated at the end with a layer of cement agood finger's-breadth thick. This massive fortification, which is lessfinished than the rest of the work but more expensive in materials, represents perhaps in itself one half of the complete task, so that, to establish her dome, Chalicodoma muraria, coming and going across thearid table-land, traverses altogether a distance of 275 miles, whichis nearly half of the greatest dimension of France from north to south. Afterwards, when, worn out with all this fatigue, the Bee retires to ahiding-place to languish in solitude and die, she is surely entitled tosay:

'I have laboured, I have done my duty!'

Yes, certainly, the Mason has toiled with a vengeance. To ensure thefuture of her offspring, she has spent her own life without reserve, herlong life of five or six weeks' duration; and now she breathes her last, contented because everything is in order in the beloved house: copiousrations of the first quality; a shelter against the winter frosts;ramparts against incursions of the enemy. Everything is in order, at least so she thinks; but, alas, what a mistake the poor mother ismaking! Here the hateful fatality stands revealed, aspera fata, whichruins the producer to provide a living for the drone; here we see thestupid and ferocious law that sacrifices the worker for the idler'sbenefit. What have we done, we and the insects, to be ground withsovran indifference under the mill-stone of such wretchedness? Oh, whatterrible, what heart-rending questions the Mason-bee's misfortunes wouldbring to my lips, if I gave free scope to my sombre thoughts! But letus avoid these useless whys and keep within the province of the mererecorder. 

There are some ten of them plotting the ruin of the peaceable andindustrious Bee; and I do not know them all. Each has her own tricks, her own art of injury, her own exterminating tactics, so that no part ofthe Mason's work may escape destruction. Some seize upon the victuals, others feed on the larvae, others again convert the dwelling to theirown use. Everything has to submit: cell, provisions, scarce-weanednurselings. 

The stealers of food are the Stelis-wasp (Stelis nasuta) and theDioxys-bee (Dioxys cincta). I have already said how, in the Mason'sabsence, the Stelis perforates the dome of cell after cell, lays hereggs there and afterwards repairs the breach with a mortar made of redearth, which at once betrays the parasite's presence to a watchful eye. The Stelis, who is much smaller than the Chalicodoma, finds enough foodin a single cell for the rearing of several of her grubs. The motherlays a number of eggs, which I have seen vary between the extremes oftwo and twelve, on the surface, next to the Mason's egg, which itselfundergoes no outrage whatever. 

Things do not go so badly at first. The feasters swim--it is theonly word--in the midst of plenty; they eat and digest like brothers. Presently, times become hard for the hostess' son; the food decreases, dearth sets in; and at length not an atom remains, although the Mason'slarva has attained at most a quarter of its growth. The others, moreexpeditious feeders, have exhausted the victuals long before the victimhas finished his normal repast. The swindled grub shrivels up and dies, while the gorged larvae of the Stelis begin to spin their strong littlebrown cocoons, pressed close together and lumped into one mass, so asto make the best use of the scanty space in the crowded dwelling. Shouldyou inspect the cell later, you will find, between the heaped cocoonson the wall, a little dried-up corpse. It is the larva that was such anobject of care to the mother Mason. The efforts of the most laborious oflives have ended in this lamentable relic. It has happened to me justas often, when examining the secrets of the cell which is at once cradleand tomb, not to come upon the deceased grub at all. I picture theStelis, before laying her own eggs, destroying the Chalicodoma's eggand eating it, as the Osmiae do among themselves; or I picture the dyingthing, an irksome mass for the numerous spinners at work in a narrowhabitation, being cut to pieces to make room for the medley of cocoons. But to so many deeds of darkness I would not like to add another by anoversight; and I prefer to admit that I failed to perceive the grub thatdied of hunger. 

Let us now show up the Dioxys. At the time when the work of constructionis in progress, she is an impudent visitor of the nests, exploiting withthe same effrontery the enormous cities of the Mason-bee of the Shedsand the solitary cupolas of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles. An innumerablepopulation, coming and going, humming and buzzing, strikes her with noawe. On the tiles hanging from the walls of my porch I see her, withher red scarf round her body, stalking with sublime assurance over theridged expanse of nests. Her black schemes leave the swarm profoundlyindifferent; not one of the workers dreams of chasing her off, unlessshe should come bothering too closely. Even then, all that happens isa few signs of impatience on the part of the hustled Bee. There is noserious excitement, no eager pursuits such as the presence of a mortalenemy might lead us to suspect. They are there in their thousands, each armed with her dagger; any one of them is capable of slaying thetraitress; and not one attacks her. The danger is not suspected. 

Meanwhile, she inspects the workyard, moves freely among the ranks ofthe Masons and bides her time. If the owner be absent, I see her divinginto a cell, coming out again a moment later with her mouth smeared withpollen. She has been to try the provisions. A dainty connoisseur, shegoes from one store to another, taking a mouthful of honey. Is it atithe for her personal maintenance, or a sample tested for the benefitof her coming grub? I should not like to say. What I do know is that, after a certain number of these tastings, I catch her stopping in acell, with her abdomen at the bottom and her head at the orifice. Thisis the moment of laying, unless I am much mistaken. 

When the parasite is gone, I inspect the home. I see nothing abnormalon the surface of the mass. The sharper eye of the owner, when she getsback, sees nothing either, for she continues the victualling withoutbetraying the least uneasiness. A strange egg, laid on the provisions, would not escape her. I know how clean she keeps her warehouse; I knowhow scrupulously she casts out anything introduced by my agency: an eggthat is not hers, a bit of straw, a grain of dust. So, according tomy evidence and that of the Chalicodoma, which is more conclusive, theDioxys's egg, if it is really laid then, is not placed on the surface. 

I suspect, without having yet verified my suspicion--and I reproachmyself for the neglect--I suspect that the egg is buried in the heap ofpollen-dust. When I see the Dioxys come out of a cell with her mouthall over yellow flour, perhaps she has been surveying the ground andpreparing a hiding-place for her egg. What I take for a mere tastingmight well be a more serious act. Thus concealed, the egg escapes theeagle eye of the Bee, whereas, if left uncovered, it would inevitablyperish, would be flung on the rubbish heap at once by the owner ofthe nest. When the Spotted Sapyga lays her egg on that of theBramble-dwelling Osmia, she does the deed under cover of darkness, in the gloom of a deep well to which not the least ray of light canpenetrate; and the mother, returning with her pellet of green puttyto build the closing partition, does not see the usurping germ and isignorant of the danger. But here everything happens in broad daylight;and this demands more cunning in the method of installation. 

Besides, it is the one favourable moment for the Dioxys. If she waitsfor the Mason-bee to lay, it is too late, for the parasite is not ableto break down doors, as the Stelis does. As soon as her egg is laid, theMason-bee of the Sheds comes out of her cell and at once turns round andproceeds to close it up with the pellet of mortar which she holds readyin her mandibles. The material is employed with such method that theactual sealing is done in a moment: the other pellets, the object ofrepeated journeys, will serve merely to increase the thickness of thelid. The chamber is inaccessible to the Dioxys from the first touch ofthe trowel. Hence it is absolutely necessary for her to see to heregg before the Mason-bee of the Sheds has disposed of hers and no lessnecessary to conceal it from the Mason's watchful eye. 

The difficulties are not so great in the nests of the Mason-bee of thePebbles. After this Bee has laid her egg, she leaves it for a time to goin search of the cement needed for closing the cell; or, if she alreadyholds a pellet in her mandibles, this is not enough to seal it properly, as the orifice is larger. More pellets are needed to wall up theentrance entirely. The Dioxys would have time to strike her blow duringthe mother's absences; but everything seems to suggest that she behaveson the pebbles as she does on the tiles. She steals a march by hidingthe egg in the mass of pollen and honey. 

What becomes of the Mason's egg confined in the same cell with the eggof the Dioxys? In vain have I opened nests at every season; I have neverfound a vestige of the egg nor of the grub of either Chalicodoma. TheDioxys, whether as a larva on the honey, or enclosed in its cocoon, or as the perfect insect, was always alone. The rival had disappearedwithout a trace. A suspicion thereupon suggests itself; and the factsare so compelling that the suspicion is almost equal to a certainty. Theparasitic grub, which hatches earlier than the other, emerges from itshiding-place, from the midst of the honey, comes to the surface and, with its first bite, destroys the egg of the Mason-bee, as the Sapygadoes the egg of the Osmia. It is an odious, but a supremely efficaciousmethod. Nor must we cry out too loudly against such foul play on thepart of a new born infant: we shall meet with even more heinous tacticslater. The criminal records of life are full of these horrors which wedare not search too deeply. An infinitesimal creature, a barely-visiblegrub, with the swaddling-clothes of its egg still clinging to it, is ledby instinct, at its first inspiration, to exterminate whatever is in itsway. 

So the Mason's egg is exterminated. Was it really necessary in theDioxys' interest? Not in the least. The hoard of provisions is too largefor its requirements in a cell of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds; howmuch more so in a cell of the Chalicodoma of the Pebbles! She eats nota half, hardly a third of it. The rest remains as it was, untouched. Wesee here, in the destruction of the Mason's egg, a flagrant waste whichaggravates the crime. Hunger excuses many things; for lack of food, thesurvivors on the raft of the Medusa indulged in a little cannibalism;but here there is enough food and to spare. When there is more than sheneeds, what earthly motive impels the Dioxys to destroy a rival inthe germ stage? Why cannot she allow the larva, her mess-mate, to takeadvantage of the remains and afterwards to shift for itself as best itcan? But no: the Mason-bee's offspring must needs be stupidly sacrificedon the top of provisions which will only grow mouldy and useless! Ishould be reduced to the gloomy lucubrations of a Schopenhauer if I oncelet myself begin on parasitism. 

Such is a brief sketch of the two parasites of the Chalicodoma of thePebbles, true parasites, consumers of provisions hoarded on behalfof others. Their crimes are not the bitterest tribulations of theMason-bee. If the first starves the Mason's grub to death, if the secondmakes it perish in the egg, there are others who have a more pitiableending in store for the worker's family. When the Bee's grub, all plumpand fat and greasy, has finished its provisions and spun its cocoonwherein to sleep the slumber akin to death, the necessary period ofpreparation for its future life, these other enemies hasten to the nestswhose fortifications are powerless against their hideously ingeniousmethods. Soon on the sleeper's body lies a nascent grub which feasts inall security on the luscious fare. The traitors who attack the larvaein their lethargy are three in number: an Anthrax, a Leucopsis and amicroscopic dagger-wearer. (Monodontomerus cupreus. For this and theAnthrax, cf. "The Life of the Fly": chapters 2 and 3. The Leucopsis isa Hymenopteron, the essay upon whom forms the concluding chapter of thepresent volume. --Translator's Note. ) Their story deserves to be toldwithout reticence; and I shall tell it later. For the moment, I merelymention the names of the three exterminators. 

The provisions are stolen, the egg is destroyed. The young grub dies ofhunger, the larva is devoured. Is that all? Not yet. The worker mustbe exploited thoroughly, in her work as well as in her family. Here aresome now who covet her dwelling. When the Mason is constructing a newedifice on a pebble, her almost constant presence is enough to keep theaspirants to free lodgings at a distance; her strength and vigilanceoverawe whoso would annex her masonry. If, in her absence, one greatlydaring thinks of visiting the building, the owner soon appears upon thescene and ousts her with the most discouraging animosity. She has noneed then to fear the entrance of unwelcome tenants while the house isnew. But the Bee of the Pebbles also uses old dwellings for her laying, as long as they are not too much dilapidated. In the early stages ofthe work, neighbours compete for these with an eagerness which showsthe value attached to them. Face to face, at times with their mandiblesinterlocked, now both rising into the air, now coming down again, thentouching ground and rolling over each other, next flying up again, forhours on end they will wage battle for the property at issue. 

A ready-made nest, a family heirloom which needs but a little restoring, is a precious thing for the Mason, ever sparing of her time. We find somany of the old homes repaired and restocked that I suspect the Bee oflaying new foundations only when there are no secondhand nests to behad. To have the chambers of a dome occupied by a stranger thereforemeans a serious privation. 

Now several Bees, however industrious in gathering honey, buildingparty-walls and contriving receptacles for provisions, are less cleverat preparing the resorts in which the cells are to be stacked. Theabandoned chambers of the Chalicodoma, now larger than they wereoriginally, through the addition of the hall of exit, are first-rateacquisitions for them. The great thing is to occupy these chambersfirst, for here possession is nine parts of the law. Once established, the Mason is not disturbed in her home, while she, in her turn, does notdisturb the stranger who has settled down before her in an old nest, the patrimony of her family. The disinherited one leaves the Bohemian toenjoy the ruined manor in peace and goes to another pebble to establishherself at fresh expense. 

In the first rank of these free tenants, I will place an Osmia (Osmiacyanoxantha, PEREZ) and a Megachile, or Leaf-cutting Bee (Megachileapicalis, SPIN. ) (Cf. "Bramble-dwellers and Others": chapter8. --Translator's Note. ), both of whom work in May, at the same time asthe Mason, while both are small enough to lodge from five to eightcells in a single chamber of the Chalicodoma, a chamber increased bythe addition of an outer hall. The Osmia subdivides this space intovery irregular compartments by means of slanting, upright or curvedpartitions, subject to the dictates of space. There is no art, consequently, in the accumulation of little cells; the architect'sonly task is to use the breadth at her disposal in a frugal manner. Thematerial employed for the partitions is a green, vegetable putty, whichthe Osmia must obtain by chewing the shredded leaves of a plant whosenature is still uncertain. The same green paste serves for the thickplug that closes the abode. But in this case the insect does not use itunadulterated. To give greater power of resistance to the work, it mixesa number of bits of gravel with the vegetable cement. These materials, which are easily picked up, are lavishly employed, as though the motherfeared lest she should not fortify sufficiently the entrance to herdwelling. They form a sort of coarse stucco, on the more or less smoothcupola of the Chalicodoma; and this unevenness, as well as the greencolouring of its mortar of masticated leaves, at once betrays theOsmia's nest. In course of time, under the prolonged action of the air, the vegetable putty turns brown and assumes a dead-leaf tint, especiallyon the outside of the plug; and it would then be difficult for any onewho had not seen them when freshly made to recognize their nature. 

The old nests on the pebbles seem to suit other Osmiae. My notesmention Osmia Morawitzi, PEREZ, and Osmia cyanea, KIRB. , as having beenrecognized in these dwellings, although they are not very assiduousvisitors. Lastly, to complete the enumeration of the Bees known to meas making their homes in the Mason's cupolas, I must add Megachileapicalis, who piles in each cell a half-dozen or more honey-potsconstructed with disks cut from the leaves of the wild rose, and anAnthidium whose species I cannot state, having seen nothing of her buther white cotton sacks. 

The Mason-bee of the Sheds, on the other hand, supplies free lodgingsto two species of Osmiae, Osmia tricornis, LATR. , and Osmia Latreillii, SPIN. , both of whom are quite common. The Three-horned Osmia frequentsby preference the habitations of the Bees that build their nestsin populous colonies, such as the Chalicodoma of the Sheds and theHairy-footed Anthophora. Latreille's Osmia is nearly always found withthe Three-horned Osmia at the Chalicodoma's. 

The real builder of the city and the exploiter of the labour of otherswork together, at the same period, form a common swarm and live inperfect harmony, each Bee of the two species attending to her businessin peace. They share and share alike, as though by tacit agreement. Isthe Osmia discreet enough not to put upon the good-natured Mason andto utilize only abandoned passages and waste cells? Or does she takepossession of the home of which the real owners could themselves havemade use? I lean in favour of usurpation, for it is not rare to see theChalicodoma of the Sheds clearing out old cells and using them as doesher sister of the Pebbles. Be this as it may, all this little busy worldlives without strife, some building anew, others dividing up the olddwelling. 

Those Osmiae, on the contrary, who are the self-invited guests of theMason-bee of the Pebbles are the sole occupants of the dome. The causeof this isolation lies in the unsociable temper of the proprietress. Theold nest does not suit her from the moment that she sees it occupiedby another. Instead of going shares, she prefers to seek elsewhere adwelling where she can work in solitude. Her gracious surrender of amost excellent lodging in favour of a stranger who would be incapableof offering the least resistance if a dispute arose proves the greatimmunity enjoyed by the Osmia in the home of the worker whom sheexploits. The common and peaceful swarming of the Mason-bee of the Shedsand the two cell-borrowing Osmiae proves it in a still more positivefashion. There is never a fight for the acquisition of another's goodsor the defence of one's own property; never a brawl between Osmiae andChalicodomae. Robber and robbed live on the most neighbourly terms. TheOsmia considers herself at home; and the other does nothing to undeceiveher. If the parasites, so deadly to the workers, move about in theirvery ranks with impunity, without arousing the faintest excitement, anequally complete indifference must be shown by the dispossessed ownersto the presence of the usurpers in their old homes. I should be greatlyput to it if I were asked to reconcile this calmness on the part of theexpropriated one with the ruthless competition that is said to sway theworld. Fashioned so as to instal herself in the Mason's property, theOsmia meets with a peaceful reception from her. My feeble eyes can seeno further. 

I have named the provision-thieves, the grub-murderers and thehouse-grabbers who levy tribute on the Mason-bee. Does that end thelist? Not at all. The old nests are cities of the dead. They containBees who, on achieving the perfect state, were unable to open theexit-door through the cement and who withered in their cells; theycontain dead larvae, turned into black, brittle cylinders; untouchedprovisions, both mouldy and fresh, on which the egg has come to grief;tattered cocoons; shreds of skins; relics of the transformation. 

If we remove the nest of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds from its tile--anest sometimes quite eight inches thick--we find live inhabitantsonly in a thin outer layer. All the remainder, the catacombs of pastgenerations, is but a horrible heap of dead, shrivelled, ruined, decomposed things. Into this sub-stratum of the ancient city theunreleased Bees, the untransformed larvae fall as dust; here thehoney-stores of old go sour, here the uneaten provisions are reduced tomould. 

Three undertakers, all members of the Beetle tribe, a Clerus, a Ptinusand an Anthrenus, batten on these remains. The larvae of the Anthrenusand the Ptinus gnaw the ashes of the corpses; the larva of the Clerus, with the black head and the rest of its body a pretty pink, appeared tome to be breaking into the old jam-pots filled with rancid honey. Theperfect insect itself, garbed in vermilion with blue ornaments, isfairly common on the surface of the clay slabs during the workingseason, strolling leisurely through the yard to taste here and there thedrops of honey oozing from some cracked pot. Notwithstanding his showylivery, so unlike the workers' sombre frieze, the Chalicodomae leave himin peace, as though they recognized in him the scavenger whose duty itis to keep the sewers wholesome. 

Ravaged by the passing years, the Mason's home at last falls into ruinand becomes a hovel. Exposed as it is to the direct action of wind andweather, the dome built upon a pebble chips and cracks. To repair itwould be too irksome, nor would that restore the original solidity ofthe shaky foundation. Better protected by the covering of a roof, thecity of the sheds resists longer, without however escaping eventualdecay. The storeys which each generation adds to those in which it wasborn increase the thickness and the weight of the edifice in alarmingproportions. The moisture of the tile filters into the oldest layers, wrecks the foundations and threatens the nest with a speedy fall. It istime to abandon for good the house with its cracks and rents. 

Thereupon the crumbling apartments, on the pebble as well as on thetile, become the home of a camp of gypsies who are not particular wherethey find a shelter. The shapeless hovel, reduced to a fragment of awall, finds occupants, for the Mason's work must be exploited to theutmost limits of possibility. In the blind alleys, all that remains ofthe former cells, Spiders weave a white-satin screen, behind which theylie in wait for the passing game. In nooks which they repair insummary fashion with earthen embankments or clay partitions, HuntingWasps--Pompili and Tripoxyla--store up small members of the Spidertribe, including sometimes the Weaving Spiders who live in the sameruins. 

I have said nothing yet of the Chalicodoma of the Shrubs. My silenceis not due to negligence, but to the circumstance that I am almostdestitute of facts relating to her parasites. Of the many nests whichI have opened in order to study their inhabitants, only one so far hasbeen invaded by strangers. This nest, the size of a large walnut, wasfixed on a pomegranate-branch. It comprised eight cells, of which sevenwere occupied by the Chalicodoma, and the eighth by a little Chalcis, the plague of a whole host of the Bee-tribe. Apart from this instance, which was not a very serious case, I have seen nothing. In thoseaerial nests, swinging at the end of a twig, not a Dioxys, a Stelis, an Anthrax, a Leucopsis, those dread ravagers of the other two Masons;never any Osmiae, Megachiles or Anthidia, those lodgers in the oldbuildings. 

The absence of the latter is easily explained. The Chalicodoma's masonrydoes not last long on its frail support. The winter winds, when theshelter of the foliage has disappeared, must easily break the twig, which is little thicker than a straw and liable to give way by reason ofits heavy burden. Threatened with an early fall, if it is not already onthe ground, last year's dwelling is not restored to serve the needs ofthe present generation. The same nest does not serve twice; and thisdoes away with the Osmiae and with their rivals in the art of utilizingold cells. 

The elucidation of this point does not remove the obscurity of the next. I can see nothing to account for the absence or at least the extremerareness of usurpers of provisions and consumers of grubs, both of whomare very indifferent to the new or old conditions of the nest, so longas the cells are well stocked. Can it be that the lofty position of theedifice and the shaky support of the twig arouse distrust in the Dioxysand other malefactors? For lack of a better explanation, I will leave itat that. 

If my idea is not an empty fancy, we must admit that the Chalicodoma ofthe Shrubs was singularly well-inspired in building in mid-air. You haveseen of what misfortunes the other two are victims. If I take a censusof the population of a tile, many a time I find the Dioxys and theMason-bee in almost equal proportions. The parasite has wiped outhalf the colony. To complete the disaster, it is not unusual for thegrub-eaters, the Leucopsis and her rival, the pygmy Chalcis, to havedecimated the other half. I say nothing of Anthrax sinuata, whom Isometimes see coming from the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds; herlarva preys on the Three-horned Osmia, the Mason-bee's visitor. 

All solitary though she be on her boulder, which would seem the properthing to keep away exploiters, the scourge of dense populations, theChalicodoma of the Pebbles is no less sorely tried. My notes abound incases such as the following: of the nine cells in one dome, three areoccupied by the Anthrax, two by the Leucopsis, two by the Stelis, oneby the Chalcis and the ninth by the Mason. It is as though the fourmiscreants had joined forces for the massacre: the whole of the Bee'sfamily has disappeared, all but one young mother saved from the disasterby her position in the centre of the citadel. I have sometimes stuffedmy pockets with nests removed from their pebbles without finding asingle one that has not been violated by one or other of the malefactorsand oftener still by several of them at a time. It is almost an eventfor me to find a nest intact. After these funereal records, I am hauntedby a gloomy thought: the weal of one means the woe of another. 

CHAPTER 11. THE LEUCOPSES. 

(This chapter should be read in conjunction with the essays entitled"The Anthrax" and "Larval Dimorphism", forming chapters 2 and 4 of "TheLife of the Fly. "--Translator's Note. )

Let us visit the nests of Chalicodoma muraria in July, detaching themfrom their pebbles with a sideward blow, as I explained when telling thestory of the Anthrax. The Mason-bee's cocoons with two inhabitants, onedevouring, the other in process of being devoured, are numerous enoughto allow me to gather some dozens in the course of a morning, before thesun becomes unbearably hot. We will give a smart tap to the flints so asto loosen the clay domes, wrap these up in newspapers, fill our boxand go home as fast as we can, for the air will soon be as fiery as thedevil's kitchen. 

Inspection, which is easier in the shade indoors, soon tells us that, though the devoured is always the wretched Mason-bee, the devourerbelongs to two different species. In the one case, the cylindrical form, the creamy-white colouring and the little nipple constituting the headreveal to us the larva of the Anthrax, which does not concern us atpresent; in the other, the general structure and appearance betray thegrub of some Hymenopteron. The Mason's second exterminator is, in fact, a Leucopsis (Leucopsis gigas, FAB. ), a magnificent insect, strippedblack and yellow, with an abdomen rounded at the end and hollowed out, as is also the back, into a groove to contain a long rapier, as slenderas a horsehair, which the creature unsheathes and drives through themortar right into the cell where it proposes to establish its egg. Before occupying ourselves with its capacities as an inoculator, let uslearn how its larva lives in the invaded cell. 

It is a hairless, legless, sightless grub, easily confused, byinexperienced eyes, with those of various honey-gathering Hymenoptera. Its more apparent characteristics consist of a colouring like thatof rancid butter, a shiny and as it were oily skin and a segmentationaccentuated by a series of marked swellings, so that, when looked atfrom the side, the back is very plainly indented. When at rest, thelarva is like a bow bending round at one point. It is made up ofthirteen segments, including the head. This head, which is very smallcompared with the rest of the body, displays no mouth-part underthe lens; at most you see a faint red streak, which calls for themicroscope. You then distinguish two delicate mandibles, very short andfashioned into a sharp point. A small round mouth, with a fine pierceron the right and left, is all that the powerful instrument reveals. Asfor my best single magnifying-glasses, they show me nothing at all. Onthe other hand, we can quite easily, without arming the eye with a lens, perceive the mouth-apparatus--and particularly the mandibles--ofeither a honey-eater, such as an Osmia, Chalicodoma or Megachile, ora game-eater, such as a Scolia, Ammophila or Bembex. All these possessstout pincers, capable of gripping, grinding and tearing. Then whatis the purpose of the Leucopsis' invisible implements? His method ofconsuming will tell us. 

Like his prototype, the Anthrax, the Leucopsis does not eat theChalicodoma-grub, that is to say, he does not break it up intomouthfuls; he drains it without opening it and digging into its vitals. In him again we see exemplified that marvellous art which consists infeeding on the victim without killing it until the meal is over, soas always to have a portion of fresh meat. With its mouth assiduouslyapplied to the unhappy creature's skin, the lethal grub fills itself andwaxes fat, while the fostering larva collapses and shrivels, retainingjust enough life, however, to resist decomposition. All that remains ofthe decanted corpse is the skin, which, when softened in water and blownout, swells into a balloon without the least escape of gas, thusproving the continuity of the integument. All the same, the apparentlyunpunctured bladder has lost its contents. It is a repetition of whatthe Anthrax has shown us, with this difference, that the Leucopsisseems not so well skilled in the delicate work of absorbing the victim. Instead of the clean white granule which is the sole residue whenthe Fly has finished her joint, the insect with the long probe has aplateful of leavings, not seldom soiled with the brownish tinge offood that has gone bad. It would seem that, towards the end, the act ofconsumption becomes more savage and does not disdain dead meat. I alsonotice that the Leucopsis is not able to get up from dinner or to sitdown to it again as readily as the Anthrax. I have sometimes to teasehim with the point of a hair-pencil in order to make him let go; and, once he has left the joint, he hesitates a little before putting hismouth to it again. His adhesion is not the mere result of a kiss likethat of a cupping-glass; it can only be explained by hooks that needreleasing. 

I now see the use of the microscopic mandibles. Those two delicatespikes are incapable of chewing anything, but they may very well serveto pierce the epidermis with an aperture smaller than that made by thefinest needle; and it is through this puncture that the Leucopsis sucksthe juices of his prey. They are instruments made to perforate the bagof fat which slowly, without suffering any internal injury, is emptiedthrough an opening repeated here and there. The Anthrax' cupping-glassis here replaced by piercers of exceeding sharpness and so short thatthey cannot hurt anything beyond the skin. Thus do we see in operation, with a different sort of implements, that wise system which keeps theprovisions fresh for the consumer. 

It is hardly necessary to say, to those who have read the story of theAnthrax, that this kind of feeding would be impossible with a victimwhose tissues possessed their final hardness. The Mason-bee's grub istherefore emptied by the Leucopsis' larva while it is in a semifluidstate and deep in the torpor of the nymphosis. The last fortnight inJuly and the first fortnight in August are the best times to witness therepast, which I have seen going on for twelve and fourteen days. Later, we find nothing in the Mason-bee's cocoon except the Leucopsis' larva, gloriously fat, and, by its side, a sort of thin, rancid rasher, theremains of the deceased wet-nurse. Things then remain as they are untilthe hot part of the following summer or at least until the end of June. 

Then appears the nymph, which teaches us nothing striking; and at lastthe perfect insect, whose hatching may be delayed until August. Its exitfrom the Mason's fortress has no likeness to the strange method employedby the Anthrax. Endowed with stout mandibles, the perfect insect splitsthe ceiling of its abode by itself without much difficulty. At thetime of its deliverance, the Mason-bees, who work in May, have longdisappeared. The nests on the pebbles are all closed, the provisioningis finished, the larvae are sleeping in their yellow cocoons. As theold nests are utilized by the Mason so long as they are not too muchdilapidated, the dome which has just been vacated by the Leucopsis, now more than a year old, has its other cells occupied by the Bee'schildren. There is here, without seeking farther, a fat living for theLeucopsis' offspring which she well knows how to turn to profit. Itdepends but on herself to make the house in which she was born intothe residence of her family. Besides, if she has a fancy for distantexploration, clay domes abound in the harmas. The inoculation of theeggs through the walls will begin shortly. Before witnessing thiscurious performance, let us examine the needle that is to effect it. 

The insect's abdomen is hollowed, at the top, into a furrow that runs upto the base of the thorax; the end, which is broader and rounded, has anarrow slit, which seems to divide this region into two. The wholething suggests a pulley with a fine groove. When at rest, theinoculating-needle or ovipositor remains packed in the slit and thefurrow. The delicate instrument thus almost completely encircles theabdomen. Underneath, on the median line, we see a long, dark-brownscale, pointed, keel-shaped, fixed by its base to the first abdominalsegment, with its sides prolonged into membranous wings which arefastened tightly to the insect's flanks. Its function is to protectthe underlying region, a soft-walled region in which the probe hasits source. It is a cuirass, a lid which protects the delicatemotor-machinery during periods of inactivity but swings from back tofront and lifts when the implement has to be unsheathed and used. 

We will now remove this lid with the scissors, so as to have the wholeapparatus before our eyes, and then raise the ovipositor with the pointof a needle. The part that runs along the back comes loose without theslightest difficulty, but the part embedded in the groove at the end ofthe abdomen offers a resistance that warns us of a complication which wedid not notice at first. The tool, in fact, consists of three pieces, a central piece, or inoculating-filament, and two side-pieces, whichtogether constitute a scabbard. The two latter are more substantial, are hollowed out like the sides of a groove and, when uniting, forma complete groove in which the filament is sheathed. This bivalvularscabbard adheres loosely to the dorsal part; but, farther on, at the tipof the abdomen and under the belly, it can no longer be detached, asits valves are welded to the abdominal wall. Here, therefore, we find, between the two joined protecting parts, a simple trench in which thefilament lies covered up. As for this filament, it is easily extractedfrom its sheath and released down to its base, under the shield formedby the scale. 

Seen under the magnifying-glass, it is a round, stiff, horny thread, midway in thickness between a human hair and a horse-hair. Its tip is alittle rough, pointed and bevelled to some length down. The microscopebecomes necessary if we would see its real structure, which is much lesssimple than it at first appears. We perceive that the bevelled end-partconsists of a series of truncated cones, fitting one into the other, with their wide base slightly projecting. This arrangement produces asort of file, a sort of rasp with very much blunted teeth. When pressedon the slide, the thread divides into four pieces of unequal length. Thetwo longer end in the toothed bevel. They come together in a very narrowgroove, which receives the two other, rather shorter pieces. These bothend in a point, which, however, is not toothed and does not project asfar as the final rasp. They also unite to form a groove, which fits intothe groove of the other two, the whole constituting a complete channelor duct. Moreover, the two shorter pieces, considered together, canmove, lengthwise, in the groove that receives them; they can also moveone over the other, always lengthwise, so much so that, on the slide ofthe microscope, their terminal points are seldom situated on the samelevel. 

If with our scissors we cut a piece of the inoculating-thread from theliving insect and examine the section under the magnifying-glass, weshall see the inner groove lengthen out and project beyond the outergroove and then go in again in turn, while from the wound there oozesa tiny albimunous drop, doubtless proceeding from the liquid that givesthe egg the singular appendage to which we shall come presently. Bymeans of these longitudinal movements of the inner trench inside theouter trench and of the sliding, one over the other, of the two portionsof the former, the egg can be despatched to the end of the ovipositornotwithstanding the absence of any muscular contraction, which isimpossible in a horny conduit. 

We have only to press the upper surface of the abdomen to see itdisjoint itself from the first segment, as though the insect had beencut almost in two at that point. A wide gap or hiatus appears betweenthe first and second rings; and, under a thin membrane, the base of theovipositor bulges out, bent back into a stout hook. Here the filamentpasses through the insect from end to end and emerges underneath. Itsissue is therefore near the base of the abdomen, instead of at the tip, as usual. This curious arrangement has the effect of shortening thelever-arm of the ovipositor and bringing the starting-point of thefilament nearer to the fulcrum, namely, the legs of the insect, and ofthus assisting the difficult task of inoculation by making the most ofthe effort expended. 

To sum up, the ovipositor when at rest goes round the abdomen. Startingat the base, on the lower surface, it runs round the belly from front toback and then returns from back to front on the upper surface, where itends at almost the same level as its starting-point. Its length is 14millimetres. (. 546 inch--Translator's Note. ) This fixes the limit of thedepth which the probe is able to reach in the Mason-bee's nests. 

One last word on the Leucopsis' weapon. In the dying insect, beheaded, stripped of legs and wings, with a pin stuck through its body, the sidesof the fissure containing the inoculating-thread quiver violently, asif the belly were going to open, divide in two along the median lineand then reunite its two halves. The thread itself gives convulsivetremblings; it comes out of its scabbard, goes back and slips out again. It is as though the laying-implement could not persuade itself to diebefore accomplishing its mission. The insect's supreme aim is the egg;and, so long as the least spark of life remains, it makes dying effortsto lay. 

Leucopsis gigas exploits the nests of the Mason-bee of the Pebbles andthe Mason-bee of the Sheds with equal zest. To observe the insertionof the egg at my ease and to watch the operator at work over and overagain, I gave the preference to the last-named Mason, whose nests, removed from the neighbouring roofs by my orders, have hung for someyears in the arch of my basement. These clay hives fastened to tilessupply me with fresh records each summer. I am much indebted to them inthe matter of the Leucopsis' life-history. 

By way of comparison with what took place under my roof, I used toobserve the same scenes on the pebbles of the surrounding wastelands. Myexcursions, alas, did not all reward my zeal, which zeal was notwithout merit in the merciless sunshine; but still, at rare intervals, I succeeded in seeing some Leucopsis digging her probe into the mortardome. Lying flat on the ground, from the beginning to the end of theoperation, which sometimes lasted for hours, I closely watched theinsect in its every movement, while my Dog, weary of being out of doorsin that scorching heat, would discreetly retire from the fray and, with his tail between his legs and his tongue hanging out, go home andstretch himself at full length on the cool tiles of the hall. How wisehe was to scorn this pebble-gazing! I would come in half-roasted, asbrown as a berry, to find my friend Bull wedged into a corner, hisback to the wall, sprawling on all fours, while, with heaving sides, hepanted forth the last sprays of steam from his overheated interior. Yes, he was much better-advised to return as fast as he could to the shade ofthe house. Why does man want to know things? Why is he not indifferentto them, with the lofty philosophy of the animals? What interest cananything have for us that does not fill our stomachs? What is the use oflearning? What is the use of truth, when profit is all that matters?Why am I--the descendant, so they tell me, of some tertiaryBaboon--afflicted with the passion for knowledge from which Bull, myfriend and companion, is exempt? Why. . . Oh, where have I got to? I wasgoing in, wasn't I, with a splitting headache? Quick, let us get back toour subject!

It was in the first week of July that I saw the inoculation begin onmy Chalicodoma sicula nests. The parasite is at her task in the hottestpart of the day, close on three o'clock in the afternoon; and work goeson almost to the end of the month, decreasing gradually in activity. I count as many as twelve Leucopses at a time on the mostthickly-populated pair of tiles. The insect slowly and awkwardlyexplores the nests. It feels the surface with its antennae, which arebent at a right angle after the first joint. Then, motionless, withlowered head, it seems to meditate and to debate within itself on thefitness of the spot. Is it here or somewhere else that the coveted larvalies? There is nothing outside, absolutely nothing, to tell us. It is astony expanse, bumpy but yet very uniform in appearance, for the cellshave disappeared under a layer of plaster, a work of public interest towhich the whole swarm devotes its last days. If I myself, with my longexperience, had to decide upon the suitable point, even if I were atliberty to make use of a lens for examining the mortar grain by grainand to auscultate the surface in order to gather information from thesound emitted, I should decline the job, persuaded in advance that Ishould fail nine times out of ten and only succeed by chance. 

Where my discernment, aided by reason and my optical contrivances, fails, the insect, guided by the wands of its antennae, never blunders. Its choice is made. See it unsheathing its long instrument. The probepoints normally towards the surface and occupies nearly the central spotbetween the two middle-legs. A wide dislocation appears on the back, between the first and second segments of the abdomen; and the base ofthe instrument swells like a bladder through this opening; while thepoint strives to penetrate the hard clay. The amount of energy expendedis shown by the way in which the bladder quivers. At every moment weexpect to see the frail membrane burst with the violence of the effort. But it does not give way; and the wire goes deeper and deeper. 

Raising itself high on its legs, to give free play to its apparatus, theinsect remains motionless, the only sign of its arduous labours being aslight vibration. I see some perforators who have finished operating ina quarter of an hour. These are the quickest at the business. They havebeen lucky enough to come across a wall which is less thick and lesshard than usual. I see others who spend as many as three hours on asingle operation, three long hours of patient watching for me, in myanxiety to follow the whole performance to the end, three long hours ofimmobility for the insect, which is even more anxious to make sure ofboard and lodging for its egg. But then is it not a task of the utmostdifficulty to introduce a hair into the thickness of a stone? To us, with all the dexterity of our fingers, it would be impossible; to theinsect, which simply pushes with its belly, it is just hard work. 

Notwithstanding the resistance of the substance traversed, the Leucopsisperseveres, certain of succeeding; and she does succeed, although I amstill unable to understand her success. The material through which theprobe has to penetrate is not a porous substance; it is homogeneous andcompact, like our hardened cement. In vain do I direct my attention tothe exact point where the instrument is at work; I see no fissure, noopening that can facilitate access. A miner's drill penetrates the rockonly by pulverizing it. This method is not admissible here; the extremedelicacy of the implement is opposed to it. The frail stem requires, soit seems to me, a ready-made way, a crevice through which it can slip;but this crevice I have never been able to discover. What about adissolving fluid which would soften the mortar under the point of theovipositor? No, for I see not a trace of humidity around the point wherethe thread is at work. I fall back upon a fissure, a lack of continuitysomewhere, although my examination fails to discover any on theMason-bee's nest. I was better served in another case. Leucopsisdorsigera, FAB. , settles her eggs on the larva of the Diadem Anthidium, who sometimes makes her nest in reed-stumps. I have repeatedly seen herinsert her auger through a slight rupture in the side of the reed. As the wall was different, wood in the latter case and mortar in theformer, perhaps it will be best to look upon the matter as a mystery. 

My sedulous attendance, during the best part of July, in front of thetiles hanging from the walls of the arch, allowed me to reckon theinoculations. Each time that the insect, on finishing the operation, removed its probe, I marked in pencil the exact point at which theinstrument was withdrawn; and I wrote down the date beside it. Thisinformation was to be utilized when the Leucopsis finished her labours. 

When the perforators are gone, I proceed with my examination of thenests, covered with my hieroglyphics, the pencilled notes. One result, one which I fully expected, compensates me straightway for all my wearywaitings. Under each spot marked in black, under each spot whence Isaw the ovipositor withdrawn, I always find a cell, with not a singleexception. And yet there are intervals of solid stone between thecells: the partition-walls alone would account for some. Moreover, thecompartments, which are very irregularly disposed by a swarm of toilerswho all work in their own sweet way, have great irregular cavitiesbetween them, which end by being filled up with the general plasteringof the nest. The result of this arrangement is that the massive portionscover almost the same space as the hollow portions. There is nothingoutside to show whether the underlying regions are full or empty. It isquite impossible for me to decide if, by digging straight down, I shallcome to a hollow cell or to a solid wall. 

But the insect makes no mistake: the excavations under my pencil-marksbear witness to that; it always directs its apparatus towards the hollowof a cell. How is it apprised whether the part below is empty or full?Its organs of information are undoubtedly the antennae, which feel theground. They are two fingers of unparalleled delicacy, which pryinto the basement by tapping on the part above it. Then what do thosepuzzling organs perceive? A smell? Not at all; I always had my doubts ofthat and now I am certain of the contrary, after what I shall describein a moment. Do they perceive a sound? Are we to treat them as asuperior kind of microphone, capable of collecting the infinitesimalechoes of what is full and the reverberations of what is empty? It is anattractive idea, but unfortunately the antennae play their part equallywell on a host of occasions when there are no vaults to reverberate. Weknow nothing and are perhaps destined never to know anything of the realvalue of the antennal sense, to which we have nothing analogous; but, though it is impossible for us to say what it does perceive, we are atleast able to recognize to some extent what it does not perceive and, inparticular, to deny it the faculty of smell. 

As a matter of fact, I notice, with extreme surprise, that the greatmajority of the cells visited by the Leucopsis' probe do not contain theone thing which the insect is seeking, namely, the young larva of theMason-bee enclosed in its cocoon. Their contents consist of therefuse so often met with in old Chalicodoma-nests: liquid honey leftunemployed, because the egg has perished; spoilt provisions, sometimesmildewed, or sometimes a tarry mass; a dead larva, stiffened into abrown cylinder; the shrivelled corpse of a perfect insect, which lackedthe strength to effect its deliverance; dust and rubbish which hascome from the exit-window afterwards closed up by the outer coating ofplaster. The odoriferous effluvia that can emanate from these relicscertainly possess very diverse characters. A sense of smell with anysubtlety at all would not be deceived by this stuff, sour, 'high, 'musty or tarry as the case may be; each compartment, according to itscontents, has a special aroma, which we might or might not be able toperceive; and this aroma most certainly bears no resemblance tothat which we may assume the much-desired fresh larva to possess. Ifnevertheless the Leucopsis does not distinguish between these variouscells and drives the probe into all of them indifferently, is this notan evident proof that smell is no guide whatever to her in her search?Other considerations, when I was treating of the Hairy Ammophila, enabled me to assert that the antennae have no olfactory powers. To-day, the frequent mistakes of the Leucopsis, whose antennae are neverthelessconstantly exploring the surface, make this conclusion absolutelycertain. 

The perforator of clay nests has, so it seems to me, delivered us froman old physiological fallacy. She would deserve studying, if for noother result than this; but her interest is far from being exhausted. Let us look at her from another point of view, whose full importancewill not be apparent until the end; let us speak of something whichI was very far from suspecting when I was so assiduously watching thenests of my Mason-bees. 

The same cell can receive the Leucopsis' probe a number of times, atintervals of several days. I have said how I used to mark in black theexact place at which the laying-implement had entered and how I wrotethe date of the operation beside it. Well, at many of these alreadyvisited spots, concerning which I possessed the most authenticdocuments, I saw the insect return a second, a third and even afourth time, either on the same day or some while after, and drive itsinoculating-thread in again, at precisely the same place, as thoughnothing had happened. Was it the same individual repeating her operationin a cell which she had visited before but forgotten, or differentindividuals coming one after the other to lay an egg in a compartmentthought to be unoccupied? I cannot say, having neglected to mark theoperators, for fear of disturbing them. 

As there is nothing, except the mark of my pencil, a mark devoid ofmeaning to the insect, to indicate that the auger has already been atwork there, it may easily happen that the same operator, finding underher feet a spot already exploited by herself but effaced from hermemory, repeats the thrust of her tool in a compartment which shebelieves herself to be discovering for the first time. However retentiveits memory for places may be, we cannot admit that the insect remembersfor weeks on end, as well as point by point, the topography of a nestcovering a surface of some square yards. Its recollections, if it haveany, serve it badly; the outward appearance gives it no information; andits drill enters wherever it may happen to discover a cell, at pointsthat have already perhaps been pierced several times over. 

It may also happen--and this appears to me the most frequent case--thatone exploiter of a cell is succeeded by a second, a third, a fourthand others still, all fired with the newcomer's zeal because theirpredecessors have left no trace of their passage. In one way or another, the same cell is exposed to manifold layings, though its contents, theChalicodoma-grub, be only the bare ration of a single Leucopsis-grub. 

These reiterated borings are not at all rare: I noted a score of themon my tiles; and, in the case of some cells, the operation was repeatedbefore my eyes as often as four times. Nothing tells us that this numberwas not exceeded in my absence. The little that I observed prevents mefrom fixing any limit. And now a momentous question arises: is the eggreally laid each time that the probe enters a cell? I can see not theslightest excuse for supposing the contrary. The ovipositor, because ofits horny nature, can have but a very dull sense of touch. The insectis apprised of the contents of the cell only by the end of that longhorse-hair, a not very trustworthy witness, I should imagine. Theabsence of resistance tells it that it has reached an empty space; andthis is probably the only information that the insensible implement cansupply. The drill boring through the rock cannot tell the miner anythingabout the contents of the cavern which it has entered; and the case mustbe the same with the rigid filament of the Leucopses. 

Now that the thread has reached its goal, what does the cell contain?Mildewed honey, dust and rubbish, a shrivelled larva, or a larva in goodcondition? Above all, does it already contain an egg? This last questioncalls for a definite answer, but as a matter of fact it is impossiblefor the insect to learn anything from a horse-hair on that most delicatematter, the presence or absence of an egg, a mere atom of a thing, inthat vast apartment. Even admitting some sense of touch at the endof the drill, one insuperable difficulty would always remain: that offinding the exact spot where the tiny speck lies in those spacious andmysterious regions. I go so far as to believe that the ovipositor tellsthe insect nothing, or at any rate very little, of the inside of thecell, whether propitious or not to the development of the germ. Perhapseach thrust of the instrument, provided that it meets with no resistancefrom solid matter, lays the egg, to whose lot there falls at one timegood, wholesome food, at another mere refuse. 

These anomalies call for more conclusive proofs than the roughdeductions drawn from the nature of the horny ovipositor. We mustascertain in a direct fashion whether the cell into which the auger hasbeen driven several times over actually contains several occupants inaddition to the larva of the Mason-bee. When the Leucopses had finishedtheir borings, I waited a few days longer so as to give the young grubstime to develop a little, which would make my examination easier. I thenmoved the tiles to the table in my study, in order to investigate theirsecrets with the most scrupulous care. And here such a disappointmentas I have rarely known awaited me. The cells which I had seen, actuallyseen, with my own eyes, pierced by the probe two or three or even fourtimes, contained but one Leucopsis-grub, one alone, eating away at itsChalicodoma. Others, which had also been repeatedly probed, containedspoilt remnants, but never a Leucopsis. O holy patience, give me thecourage to begin again! Dispel the darkness and deliver me from doubt!

I begin again. The Leucopsis-grub is familiar to me; I can recognizeit, without the possibility of a mistake, in the nests of both theChalicodoma of the Pebbles and the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. All throughthe winter, I rush about, getting my nests from the roofs of old shedsand the pebbles of the waste-lands; I stuff my pockets with them, fillmy box, load Favier's knapsack; I collect enough to litter all thetables in my study; and, when it is too cold out of doors, when thebiting mistral blows, I tear open the fine silk of the cocoons todiscover the inhabitant. Most of them contain the Mason in the perfectstate; others give me the larva of the Anthrax; others--very numerous, these--give me the larva of the Leucopsis. And this last isalone, always alone, invariably alone. The whole thing is utterlyincomprehensible when one knows, as I know, how many times the probeentered those cells. 

My perplexity only increases when, on the return of summer, I witnessfor the second time the Leucopsis' repeated operations on the same cellsand for the second time find a single larva in the compartments whichhave been bored several times over. Shall I then be forced to acceptthat the auger is able to recognize the cells already containing anegg and that it thenceforth refrains from laying there? Must I admit anextraordinary sense of touch in that bit of horse-hair, or even better, a sort of divination which declares where the egg lies without having totouch it? But I am raving! There is certainly something that escapesme; and the obscurity of the problem is simply due to my incompleteinformation. O patience, supreme virtue of the observer, come to my aidonce more! I must begin all over again for the third time. 

Until now, my investigations have been made some time after the laying, at a period when the larva is at least fairly developed. Who knows?Something perhaps happens, at the very commencement of infancy, that maymislead me afterwards. I must apply to the egg itself if I wouldlearn the secret which the grub will not reveal. I therefore resumemy observations in the first fortnight of July, when the Leucopses arebeginning to visit busily both Mason-bee's nests. The pebbles in thewaste-lands supply me with plenty of buildings of the Chalicodoma of theWalls; the byres scattered here and there in the fields give me, undertheir dilapidated roofs, in fragments broken off with the chisel, theedifices of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. I am anxious not to completethe destruction of my home hives, already so sorely tried by myexperiments; they have taught me much and can teach me more. Aliencolonies, picked up more or less everywhere, provide me with my booty. With my lens in one hand and my forceps in the other, I go through mycollection on the same day, with the prudence and care which only thelaboratory-table permits. The results at first fall far short of myexpectations. I see nothing that I have not seen before. I make freshexpeditions, after a few days' interval; I bring back fresh loads oflumps of mortar, until at last fortune smiles upon me. 

Reason was not at fault. Each thrust means the laying of an egg when theprobe reaches the cell. Here is a cocoon of the Mason-bee of the Pebbleswith an egg side by side with the Chalicodoma-grub. But what a curiousegg! Never have my eyes beheld the like; and then is it really the eggof the Leucopsis? Great was my apprehension. But I breathed again whenI found, a couple of weeks later, that the egg had become the larva withwhich I was familiar. Those cocoons with a single egg are as numerous asI can wish; they exceed my wishes: my little glass receptacles are toofew to hold them. 

And here are others, more precious ones still, with manifold layings. I find plenty with two eggs; I find some with three or four; thebest-colonised offer me as many as five. And, to crown my delight, thejoy of the seeker to whom success comes at the last moment, when he ison the verge of despair, here again, duly furnished with an egg, is asterile cocoon, that is to say, one containing only a shrivelled anddecaying larva. All my suspicions are confirmed, down to the mostinconsequent: the egg housed with a mass of putrefaction. 

The nests of the Mason-bee of the Walls are the more regular instructure and are easier to examine, because their base is wide openonce it is separated from the supporting pebble; and it was these whichsupplied me with by far the greater part of my information. Those of theMason-bee of the Sheds have to be chipped away with a hammer before onecan inspect their cells, which are heaped up anyhow; and they do notlend themselves anything like so well to delicate investigations, asthey suffer both from the shock and the ill-treatment. 

And now the thing is done: it remains certain that the Leucopsis' layingis exposed to very exceptional dangers. She can entrust the egg tosterile cells, without provisions fit to use; she can establish severalin the same cell, though this cell contains nourishment for one only. Whether they proceed from a single individual returning several times, by inadvertence, to the same place, or are the work of differentindividuals unaware of the previous borings, those multiple layingsare very frequent, almost as much so as the normal layings. The largestwhich I have noticed consisted of five eggs, but we have no authorityfor looking upon this number as an outside limit. Who could say, whenthe perforators are numerous, to what lengths this accumulation cango? I will set forth on some future occasion how the ration of one eggremains in reality the ration of one egg, despite the multiplicity ofbanqueters. 

I will end by describing the egg, which is a white, opaque object, shaped like a much-elongated oval. One of the ends is lengthened outinto a neck or pedicle, which is as long as the egg proper. This neck issomewhat wrinkled, sinuous and as a rule considerably curved. The wholething is not at all unlike certain gourds with an elongated paunch anda snake-like neck. The total length, pedicle and all, is about 3millimetres. (About one-eighth of an inch. --Translator's Note. ) It isneedless to say, after recognizing the grub's manner of feeding, thatthis egg is not laid inside the fostering larva. Yet, before I knewthe habits of the Leucopsis, I would readily have believed that everyHymenopteron armed with a long probe inserts her eggs into the victim'ssides, as the Ichneumon-flies do to the Caterpillars. I mention this forthe benefit of any who may be under the same erroneous impression. 

The Leucopsis' egg is not even laid upon the Mason-bee's larva; it ishung by its bent pedicle to the fibrous wall of the cocoon. When I go towork very delicately, so as not to disturb the arrangement in knockingthe nest off its support, and then extract and open the cocoon, I seethe egg swinging from the silken vault. But it takes very little to makeit fall. And so, most often, even though it be merely the effect of theshock sustained when the nest is removed from its pebble, I find the eggdetached from its suspension-point and lying beside the larva, to whichit never adheres in any circumstances. The Leucopsis' probe does notpenetrate beyond the cocoon traversed; and the egg remains fastened tothe ceiling, in the crook of some silky thread, by means of its hookedpedicle. 

INDEX. 

Amazon Ant (see Red Ant). 

Ammophila. 

Ammophila hirsuta (see Hairy Ammophila). 

Ant (see also Black Ant, Red Ant). 

Anthidium (see also Cotton-bee, Diadem Anthidium). 

Anthophora (see also Hairy-footed Anthophora). 

Anthrax (see also Anthrax sinuata). 

Anthrax sinuata. 

Anthrenus. 

Ape. 

Aphis. 

Baboon. 

Bastien. 

Bee. 

Bembex (see also Bembex rostrata). 

Bembex rostrata. 

Black Ant. 

Blanchard, Emile. 

Blue Osmia. 

Bombylius. 

Bumble-bee. 

Butterfly. 

Cabbage-caterpillar. 

Cagliostro. 

Carrier-pigeon. 

Castelnau de la Porte, Francis Comte de. 

Cat. 

Caterpillar (see also Cabbage-caterpillar, Grey Worm, ProcessionaryCaterpillar, Spurge-caterpillar). 

Cerceris (see also Great Cerceris). 

Cerceris tuberculata (see Great Cerceris). 

Cetonia. 

Chalcis. 

Chalicodoma (see Mason-bee). 

Chalicodoma muraria (see Mason-bee of the Walls). 

Chalicodoma pyrenaica, C. Pyrrhopeza, C. Rufitarsis, C. Sicula (seeMason-bee of the Sheds). 

Chalicodoma rufescens (see Mason-bee of the Shrubs). 

Chat. 

Chrysis (see also Parnopes carnea, Stilbum calens). 

Clerus. 

Coelyoxis. 

Common Lizard. 

Common Wasp. 

Cornelius Nepos. 

Cotton-bee. 

Cricket. 

Crioceris. 

Crocisa. 

Darwin, Charles Robert. 

Darwin, Erasmus. 

Diadem Anthidium. 

Dioxys. 

Dioxys cincta (see Dioxys). 

Dog. 

Dufour, Jean Marie Leon. 

Duhamel du Monceau, Henri Louis. 

Duruy, Jean Victor. 

Euclid. 

Eumenes Amadei. 

Eyed Lizard. 

Fabre, Mlle. Aglae, the author's daughter. 

Fabre, Mlle. Antonia, the author's daughter. 

Fabre, Mlle. Claire, the author's daughter. 

Fabre, Mlle. Lucie, the author's granddaughter. 

Favier, the author's factotum. 

Fly. 

Franklin, Benjamin. 

Gad-fly. 

Gnat. 

Golden Wasp (see Chrysis). 

Gold-fish. 

Grasshopper (see Green Grasshopper). 

Great Cerceris. 

Green Grasshopper. 

Grey Lizard. 

Grey Worm. 

Hairy Ammophila. 

Hairy-footed Anthophora. 

Halictus. 

Hive-bee. 

Huber, Francois. 

Ichneumon-fly. 

Lacordaire, Jean Theodore. 

Lamb. 

Lark. 

Latreille's Osmia. 

Leaf-cutter (see Megachile). 

Leucopsis. 

Leucopsis dorsigera. 

Leucopsis gigas (see Leucopsis). 

Le Vaillant, Francois. 

Lion. 

Lizard (see Common Lizard, Eyed Lizard, Grey Lizard). 

Locust. 

Loriol, Dr. 

Loriol, Mme. 

Lucas, Pierre Hippolyte. 

Macmillan and Co. , Ltd. 

"Mademoiselle Mori", author of. 

Mantis (see Praying Mantis). 

Martin. 

Mason-bee (see also the varieties below). 

Mason-bee of the Pebbles (see Mason-bee of the Walls). 

Mason-bee of the Sheds. 

Mason-bee of the Shrubs. 

Mason-bee of the Walls. 

Megachile. 

Megachile apicalis (see Megachile). 

Melecta. 

Meloe (see Oil-beetle). 

Mesmer. 

Miall, Bernard. 

Monodontomerus cupreus. 

Morawitz' Osmia. 

Moth. 

Mutilla. 

Napoleon III. , the Emperor. 

Newton, Sir Isaac. 

Oil-beetle. 

Oryctes. 

Osmia (see also the varieties below). 

Osmia cyanea (see Blue Osmia). 

Osmia cyanoxantha. 

Osmia Latreillii (see Latreille's Osmia). 

Osmia Morawitzi (see Morawitz' Osmia). 

Osmia tricornis (see Three-horned Osmia). 

Osmia tridentata (see Three-pronged Osmia). 

Ox. 

Parnopes carnea. 

Perez, Professor Jean. 

Philanthus apivorus. 

Polyergus rufescens (see Red Ant). 

Pompilus. 

Praying Mantis. 

Processionary Caterpillar. 

Psithyrus. 

Ptinus. 

Rabbit. 

Reaumur, Rene Antoine Ferchault de. 

Red Ant. 

Republican (see Social Weaver-bird). 

Resin-bee. 

Rhinoceros-beetle (see Oryctes). 

Ringed Calicurgus (see Pompilus). 

Rodwell, Miss Frances. 

Rose-chafer (see Cetonia). 

Sacred Beetle. 

Sapyga punctata (see Spotted Sapyga). 

Saw-fly. 

Scolia. 

Sheep. 

Sicilian Mason-bee (see Mason-bee of the Sheds). 

Social Bee (see Hive-bee). 

Social Wasp (see Common Wasp). 

Social Weaver-bird. 

Sphex (see also Yellow-winged Sphex. )

Spider. 

Spotted Sapyga. 

Spurge-caterpillar. 

Stelis (see also Stelis nasuta). 

Stelis nasuta. 

Stilbum calens. 

Swallow. 

Swift. 

Tachina. 

Tachytes. 

Teixeira de Mattos, Alexander. 

Three-horned Osmia. 

Three-pronged Osmia. 

Tiger. 

Toussenel, Alphonse. 

Tripoxylon. 

Turnip-caterpillar, Turnip-moth (see Grey Worm). 

Wagtail (see White Wagtail). 

Warted Cerceris (see Great Cerceris). 

Wasp (see also Common Wasp). 

Weevil. 

White Wagtail. 

Wild Boar. 

Wolf. 

Yellow-winged Sphex.