FABRE'S BOOK OF INSECTS 



plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring wood, miners 

 digging underground galleries, workers in gold-beaters' 

 skin, and many more. 



See — here is a Tailor-bee. She scrapes the cobwebby 

 stalk of the yellow-flowered centaury, and gathers a ball 

 of wadding which she carries off proudly with her 

 mandibles or jaws. She will turn it, underground, into 

 cotton satchels to hold the store of honey and the eggs. 

 And here are the Leaf-cutting Bees, carrying their black, 

 white, or blood-red reaping brushes under their bodies. 

 They will visit the neighbouring shrubs, and there cut 

 from the leaves oval pieces in which to wrap their harvest. 

 Here too are the black, velvet-clad Mason-bees, who 

 work with cement and gravel. We could easily find 

 specimens of their masonry on the stones in the harmas. 

 Next comes a kind of Wild Bee who stacks her cells in the 

 winding staircase of an empty snail-shell; and another 

 who lodges her grubs in the pith of a dry bramble-stalk ; 

 and a third who uses the channel of a cut reed; and a 

 fourth who lives rent-free in the vacant galleries of some 

 Mason-bee. There are also Bees with horns, and Bees 

 with brushes on their hind-legs, to be used for reaping. 



While the walls of my harmas were being built some 

 great heaps of stones and mounds of sand were scattered 

 here and there by the builders, and were soon occupied 

 by a variety of inhabitants. The Mason-bees chose the 



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