Permutations of Sex 



gallery In front? I think not; and I will tell 

 you why. 



Long and narrow cylinders are by no 

 means to the Osmla's taste, not because of 

 their narrowness but because of their length. 

 Remember that for each load of honey 

 brought the worker Is obliged to move back- 

 wards twice. She enters, head first, to begin 

 by disgorging the honey-syrup from her crop. 

 Unable to turn In a passage which she blocks 

 entirely, she goes out backwards, crawling 

 rather than walking, a laborious performance 

 on the polished surface of the glass and a 

 performance which, with any other surface, 

 would still be very awkward, as the wings are 

 bound to rub against the wall with their free 

 end and are liable to rumple or get bent. She 

 goes out backwards, reaches the outside, turns 

 round and goes in again, but this time the 

 opposite way, so as to brush off the load of 

 pollen from her abdomen on to the heap. If 

 the gallery is at all long, this crawling back- 

 wards becomes troublesome after a time; and 

 the Osmla soon abandons a passage that is 

 too small to allow of free movement. I have 

 said that the narrow tubes of my apparatus 

 are, for the most part, only very incompletely 



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