Bramble-bees and Others 



attempt to understand how, with Its little 

 bales of cotton brought up one by one, the 

 insect, no otherwise gifted than the kneaders 

 of mud and the makers of leafy baskets, 

 manages to mat what it has collected into a 

 homogeneous whole and then to work the 

 product into a thimble-shaped wallet. Its 

 tools as a master-fuller are its legs and its 

 mandibles, which are just like those possessed 

 by the mortar-kneaders and the Leaf-cutters; 

 and yet, despite this similarity of outfit, what 

 a vast difference in the results obtained ! 



To see the Cotton-bees' talents in action 

 seems an undertaking fraught with innu- 

 merable difficulties: things happen at a depth 

 inaccessible to the eye; and to persuade the 

 insect to work in the open does not lie in our 

 power. One resource remains and I did not 

 fail to turn to it, though hitherto I have been 

 wholly unsuccessful. Three species, An- 

 thidiiim diadema, A. manicatum and A. 

 florentinum — the first-named In particular — 

 show themselves quite ready to take up their 

 abode In my reed-apparatus. All that I had 

 to do was to replace the reeds by glass tubes, 

 which would allow me to watch the work 

 without disturbing the insect. This stratagem 



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