Carpenter-Bees. 59 



an inch high with the pollen of flowers, made into a paste 

 with honey. She then covers this over with a ceiling com- 

 posed of cemented sawdust, which also serves for the floor 

 of the next chamber above it. For this purpose she cements 

 round a wall a ring of wood-chips taken from her store- 

 heap; and within this ring forms another, gradually con- 

 tracting the diameter till she has constructed a circular plate, 

 about the thickness of a crown-piece, and of considerable 

 hardness. This plate of course exhibits concentric circles, 

 somewhat similar to the annual circles in the cross section of 

 a tree. In the same manner she proceeds till she has com- 

 pleted ten or twelve cells; and then she closes the main 

 entrance with a barrier of similar materials. 



Let us compare the progress of this little joiner with a 

 human artisan one who has been long practised in his trade, 

 and has the most perfect and complicated tools for his 

 assistance. The bee has learnt 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 im- 

 pressed a plan upon her mind, which she can realize 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 augurs 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 exquisite 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. 



The violet carpenter-bee, as may be expected, occupies 

 several weeks in these complicated labours ; and during that 

 period she is gradually depositing her eggs, each of which is 

 successively to become a grub, a pupa, and a perfect bee. 

 It is obvious, therefore, as she does not lay all her eggs in 



