22 INSECT ARTIZANS AND THEIR WORK 



Well might Kirby and Spence exclaim : " No 

 circumstance connected with the storge of insects 

 is more striking than the herculean and incessant 

 labour which it leads them cheerfully to undergo. 

 Some of these exertions are so disproportionate to 

 the size of the insect, that nothing short of ocular 

 conviction could attribute them to such an agent. 

 A wild bee or a Sphex, for instance, will dig a hole 

 in a hard bank of earth some inches deep and five 

 or six times its own size, and labour unremittingly 

 at this arduous undertaking for several days, scarcely 

 allowing itself a moment for eating or repose. It 

 will then occupy as much time in searching for a 

 store of food ; and no sooner is this task finished, 

 than it will set about repeating the process, and 

 before it dies will have completed five or six 

 similar cells or even more. If you would estimate 

 this industry at its proper value, you should 

 reflect what kind of exertion it would require in a 

 man to dig in a few days, out of hard clay or sand, 

 with no other tools than his nails and teeth, five or 

 six caverns twenty feet deep and four or five wide 

 — for such an undertaking would not be compara- 

 tively greater than that of the insects in question." 



If we carefully dig around one of these mine- 

 shafts — no easy matter, for any tools we use appear 

 to be too clumsy for the purpose — we shall find that 

 they end in a round or oval chamber at the side 

 of the shaft. In this, if the miner's work is finished, 

 there is a compact ball of pollen, on which is an 

 egg or a newly hatched grub. The pollen is just 



