Bramble-bees and Others 



chiles of these parts, experienced in the local 

 flora by the long training of the centuries, but 

 complete novices in the presence of plants 

 which their race encounters for the first time, 

 ought to refuse as unusual and suspicious any 

 exotic leaves, especially when they have at 

 hand plenty of the leaves made familiar by 

 hereditary custom. The question was deserv- 

 ing of separate study. 



Two subjects of my observations, the 

 Hare-footed Leaf-cutter and the Silvery Leaf- 

 cutter, both inmates of my open-air laborator)'^, 

 gave me a definite answer. Knowing the 

 points frequented by the two Megachiles, 

 I planted In their work-yard, overgrown 

 with briar and lilac, two outlandish plants 

 which seemed to me to fulfil the re- 

 quired conditions of suppleness of texture, 

 namely, the ailantus, a native of Japan, and 

 the Virginian physostegla. Events justified 

 the selection : both Bees exploited the foreign 

 flora with the same assiduity as the local 

 flora, passing from the lilac to the ailantus, 

 from the briar to the physostegla, leaving the 

 one, going back to the other, without draw- 

 ing distinctions between the known and the 

 unknown. Inveterate habit could not have 



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