The Resin-bees 



be awarded to A. Latrcillii, who rivals her 

 fellow-worker as far as her smaller stature 

 permits. The other manipulators of resin, 

 those who build partitions in Snail-shells, 

 occupy the third place, a very long way be- 

 hind. 



And now, with the facts to support us, let 

 us philosophize a little. We have here, 

 recognized as of excellent standard by all the 

 expert classifiers, so fastidious in the arrange- 

 ment of their lists, a generic group, called 

 Anthidium, in which we find two guilds of 

 workers of entirely dissimilar character: the 

 cotton-fullers and the rcsln-kneaders. It is 

 even possible that other species, when their 

 habits are better known, will come and in- 

 crease this variety of manufactures. I con- 

 fine myself to the little that I know and ask 

 myself in what the manipulator of cotton dif- 

 fers from the manipulator of resin as regards 

 tools, that is to say, organs. Certainly, when 

 the genus Anthidium was set down by the 

 classifiers, they were not wanting in scientific 

 precision : they consulted, under the lens of 

 the microscope, the wings, the mandibles, the 

 legs, the harvesting-brush, in short, all the 

 details calculated to assist the proper delimit- 



337 



