SPRINGTIDE. 255 



The great black Carpenter bee (Xylocopa, Fig. 93) 

 is represented in some beautiful coloured diagrams by 

 Professor Dodel Port, which I possess, as sucking 

 honey quite correctly from a Salvia ; but, as far as I 

 have observed his conduct, he is an unscrupulous 

 robber. I have watched this bee rifling flower after 

 flower of Honeysuckle and of Salvia ; in every case he 

 cut through the base of the corolla at once, without 

 making any attempt to get at the honey in the legiti- 

 mate way. There are few wild flowers which seem 

 large enough to admit the body of this great bee ; 

 and not many cultivated ones, unless it be Acan- 

 thus, Justicia, Paulownia, Cobaea, and some of the 

 Bignonias. 



The little Sun Lizard (Fig. 106) has no fixed time 

 for appearing ; whenever the sun shines strong upon 

 the wall, and the air is not too keen, he creeps out 

 from his crevice and begins to bask as usual. 



Appropriate to early Spring is the legend of the 

 Almond, which runs thus : When St. Patrick went 

 to reside in the monastery of Lerins, his sister 

 might not follow him, so she remained on the 

 mainland where the town of Cannes now stands. 

 Taking leave of her brother, she asked him when he 

 would come to see her. " When the fruit-trees are in 

 blossom," he replied. Before the Winter was over 

 she grew weary of waiting, and one day, as she looked 

 wistfully toward the prison-house of her brother, she 

 besought the trees to flower. But one feared the frost, 

 another shunned the biting breath of the mistral, 

 while a third was unwilling to be conspicuous by 

 flowering while all other trees were bare. But the 

 Almond, pitying the lady's solitude, bravely put forth 



