The Mason-bees 



vides 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 

 the bushy clump a twig no thicker than a 

 straw; and on this narrow base she constructs 

 her edifice with the same mortar that she 

 would employ under a balcony or the ledge of 

 a roof. When finished, the nest is a ball of 

 earth, bisected by the twig. It is the size of 

 an apricot when the work of a single insect 

 and of one's fist if several have collaborated; 

 but this latter case is rare. 



Both Bees use the same materials: calca- 

 reous clay, mingled with a little sand and 

 kneaded into a paste with the mason's own 

 saliva. Damp places, which would facilitate 

 the quarrying and reduce the expenditure of 

 saliva for mixing the mortar, are scorned by 

 the Mason-bees, who refuse fresh earth for 

 building even as our own builders refuse plas- 

 ter and lime that have long lost their settling- 

 properties. These materials, when soaked 

 with pure moisture, would not hold properly. 

 What is wanted is a dry dust, which 

 greedily absorbs the disgorged saliva and 

 forms with the latter's albuminous elements 

 a sort of readily-hardening Roman cement, 

 15 



