More Enquiries into Mason-bees 



amazed; so was I; and we both of us almost 

 reckoned on a success. 



These preliminaries took place In the win- 

 ter; I had plenty of time to prepare for tdie 

 experiment which was to be made in the fol- 

 lowing May. 



"Favier," I said, one day, to my assistant, 

 "I shall want some of those nests. Go and 

 ask our next-door neighbour's leave and climb 

 to the roof of his shed, with some new tiles 

 and some mortar, which you can fetch from 

 the builder's. Take a dozen tiles from the 

 roof, those with the biggest nests on them, and 

 put the new ones In their place." 



Things were done accordingly. My neigh- 

 bour assented with a good grace to the ex- 

 change of tiles, for he himself is obliged, from 

 time to time, to demolish the work of the 

 Mason-bee, unless he would risk seeing his 

 roof fall in sooner or later. I was merely 

 forestalling a repair which became more 

 urgent every year. That same evening, I was 

 In possession of twelve magnificent rectangu- 

 lar blocks of nest, each lying on the convex 

 surface of a tile, that is to say, on the surface 

 looking towards the Inside of the shed. I had 

 the curiosity to weigh the largest : It turned 



