The Cotton-bees 



daily witness the gleaning, now on the clary, 

 now on the centaury. Nevertheless, the 

 Babylonian plant appears to be preferred, no 

 doubt because of its whiter, finer and more 

 plentiful down. I keep a watchful eye on the 

 scraping of the mandibles and the work of 

 the legs as they prepare the pellet; and I see 

 nothing that differs from the operations of the 

 insect when gleaning on the globe-thistle and 

 the St. Barnaby's thistle. The plant from the 

 Euphrates and the plant from Palestine are 

 treated like those of the district. 



Thus we find what the Leaf-cutters taught 

 us proved, in another way, by the cotton- 

 gatherers. In the local flora, the insect has no 

 precise domain; it reaps its harvest readily 

 now from one species, now from another, pro- 

 vided that it find the materials for its manu- 

 factures. The exotic plant is accepted quite 

 as easily as that of indigenous growth. 

 Lastly, the change from one plant to the 

 other, from the common to the rare, from 

 the habitual to the exceptional, from the 

 known to the unknown, is made suddenly, 

 without any gradual initiations. There is no 

 novitiate, no training by habit in the choice 

 of the materials of the nest. The insect's in- 



299 



