Insect Architecture, 47 



and has the most perfect and complicated tools for his assistance. The 

 bee has learned nothing by practice; she makes her nest but once in 

 her life, but it is then as complete and finished -as if she had made a 

 thousand. She has no pattern before her; but the Architect of all 

 things has impressed a plan upon her mind, which she can realise without 

 scale or compasses. Her two sharp teeth are the only tools with which 

 she is provided for her laborious work ; and yet she bores a tunnel, twelve 

 times the length of her own body, with greater ease than the workman who 

 bores into the earth for water, with his apparatus of augers adapted to 

 every soil. Her tunnel is clean and regular ; she leaves no chips at the 

 bottom, for she is provident of her materials. Further, she has an exqui- 

 site piece of joinery to perform, when her ruder labour is accomplished. 

 The patient bee works her rings from the circumference to the centre, and 

 she produces a shelf, united with such care with her natural glue, that a 

 number of fragments are as solid as one piece." (p. 50.) 



Another species has been called the poppy-bee, from its 

 selecting the scarlet petals of the poppy as tapestry for its 

 cells. From this material the bee 



" Successively cuts off small pieces of an oval shape, seizes them between 

 her legs, and conveys them to the nest. She begins her work at the bot- 

 tom, which she overlays with three or four leaves in thickness, and the sides 

 have never less than two. When she finds that the piece she has brought 

 is too large to fit the place intended, she cuts off what is superfluous, and 

 carries away the shreds. By cutting the fresh petals of a poppy with a 

 pair of scissors, we may perceive the difficulty of keeping the piece free 

 from wrinkles and shrivelling ; but the bee knows how to spread the pieces 

 which she uses as smooth as glass. 



" When she has in this manner hung the little chamber all round with 

 this splendid scarlet tapestry, of which she is not sparing, but extends it 

 even beyond the entrance, she then fills it with the pollen of flowers mixed 

 with honey, to the height of about half an inch. In this magazine of pro- 

 visions for her future progeny she lays an egg, and over it folds down the 

 tapestry of poppy petals from above. The upper part is then filled in with 

 earth ; " but Latreille says, he has observed more than one cell constructed 

 in a single excavation. This may account for Reaumur's describing them 

 as sOmetiroes 7 in. deep; a circumstance which Latreille, howeVer, 'thinks 

 very surprising., It; !\yiLl, perhaps, be imp<2>psible eve? to ascertain beyond a 

 doubt;, whjether the tapestr^-bee is led to s^ect the; brilliant petals of the 

 poppy fifoni their coloiir, 'or from any other quality they may possess, of 

 softnfe^s bi- of 'Wftiinth; for instance. R^autntlr thinks that the largeness, 

 united' with the flexibility of the poppy leaves, determines her choice. Yet 

 it is not iipprobable that her eye may be gratified by the appearance of her 

 nest; that she may possess a feeling of the beautiful in colour, and may 

 look with complacency upon the delicate hangings of the apartment which 

 she destines for her offspring. Why should not an insect be supposed to 

 have a glimmering of the value of ornament? How can we pronounce, 

 from our. limited notion of the mode in which the inferior animals think and 

 act, that their gratifications are wholly bounded by the positive utility of 

 the objects which surround them ? Why does a dog howl at the sound of 

 a bugle, but because it offeUds his organs of hearing ? And why, therefore, 

 may not a bee feel gladness in the brilliant hues of her scarlet drapery, 

 because they are grateful to her organs of sight ? All these little creatures 

 work, probably, with more neatness and finish than is absolutely essential 

 for comfort ; and this circumstance alone would imply that they have some- 

 thing of taste to exhibit, which produces to them a pleasurable emotion. 



" The tapestry-bee is, however, content with ornamenting the interior only 



