Bramble-bees and Others 



In the cylinder of any reed lying flat on the 

 ground. 



I have already spoken of an Osmia (O. 

 cyanoxantha, Perez) who elects to make her 

 home in the old nests of the Mason-bee of the 

 Pebbles. Her closing-plug is made of a stout 

 concrete, consisting of fair-sized bits of 

 gravel sunk in the green paste; but for the 

 inner partitions she employs only unalloyed 

 putty. As the outer door, situated on the 

 curve of an unprotected dome, is exposed to 

 the inclemencies of the weather, the mother 

 has to think of fortifying it. Danger, no 

 doubt, Is the originator of that gritty concrete. 



The Golden Osmia (O. aurulenta, Latr.) 

 absolutely insists on an empty Snail-shell as 

 her residence. The Brown or Girdled Snail, 

 the Garden Snail and especially the Common 

 Snail, who has a more spacious spiral, all scat- 

 tered at random in the grass, at the foot of the 

 walls and of the sun-swept rocks, furnish her 

 with her usual dwelling-house. Her dried 

 putty is a kind of felt full of short white 

 hairs. It must come from some hairy-leaved 

 plant, one of the Boragineae perhaps, rich both 

 in mucilage and the necessary bristles. 



The Red Osmia (O. rufo-hirta, Latr.) 



60 



