The Resin-bees 



A. LatrcilUi, without having a very large 

 implement, also bears witness to the pos- 

 sibility of heaping up soft resin with a 

 rake; she arms her mandibles with three or 

 four sharply-cut teeth. In short, out of four 

 Resin-bees, the only four that I know, one is 

 armed with a spoon, if this expression be 

 really suited to the tool's function; the three 

 others are armed with a rake; and It so hap- 

 pens that the most copious heap of resin is 

 just the work of the rake with the most teeth 

 to It, a tool suited to the cotton-reapers, ac- 

 cording to the views of the Bordeaux entomo- 

 logical expert. 



No, the explanation that appealed to me 

 so much at first is not admissible. The mandi- 

 ble, whether supplied with teeth or not, does 

 not account at all for the two manufactures. 

 May we, in this predicament, have recourse 

 to the general structure of the insect, although 

 this Is not distinctive enough to be of much 

 use to us? Not so either; for, in the same 

 stone-heaps where the Osmia and the two 

 Resin-bees of the Snail-shells work, I find 

 from time to time another manipulator of 

 mastic who bears no structural relationship 

 whatever to the genus Anthidlum. It Is a 



331 



