II 



MINERS 



The mining industry is very strongly represented 

 among the insect races. Its exponents practise 

 many diverse forms of the art, some crude, others 

 highly specialized. Some insects are miners from 

 their birth, others take up the craft only when they 

 have reached maturity, and do so then not as a 

 means of subsistence for themselves, but solely for 

 the purpose of providing for a progeny that they 

 will never see. One of the most astonishing things 

 to an observant entomologist is the sight of the 

 little bees of the genus Andrena busy sinking their 

 vertical mine-shafts into a path that has been 

 beaten down to make it uniformly firm and level, 

 and trodden by feet innumerable. Try with your 

 fingers or your pocket-knife to excavate such a 

 hole yourself, with all a man's strength, and you 

 will acknowledge that your best efforts only make a 

 very sorry job of it. The little bee has only her 

 slender legs and her jaws to help her in this work, 

 but she loosens the little stones and the hard com- 

 pacted soil, and gets it out bit by bit, and in a 

 remarkably short space of time has sunk her mine 

 to a depth of four inches or more. 



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