6 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



used to stick existing material ^together. Some of the 

 most charming little workers to watch are the mason 

 bees and mason wasps. Much has been written about 

 them. But they are by no means very common insects, 

 and not conspicuous. Consequently, their work is not 

 so often seen as might be expected. They are solitary 

 little creatures, and have none of the fussy aggressive- 

 ness of the social bees and wasps, often seeming rather 

 to enjoy the company of an onlooker, and sometimes 

 being quite willing to be fed. Some of the mason 

 wasps combine the parts of mason and miner. One 

 makes burrows in hard sandbanks, but like the old 

 Suffolk squires who dug a moat round their future 

 house, and formed the bricks to build it with out of 

 the earth they removed, this wasp moulds the sand 

 which it digs out into bricks, stuck together with 

 gum, and piles these in a kind of tower round the 

 shaft, like the towers which cap old mine-shafts in 

 the North and Midlands. Then, when the shaft is 

 finished, it takes down the tower, and uses the bricks 

 to line the bottom of the hole with, so that no enemy 

 may break into the safe in which its eggs are laid. 

 Another mason wasp chooses bricks to burrow in, re- 

 moving the particles in the form of brick-dust, which 

 it excavates with its steel-like jaws. Not satisfied with 

 a brick chamber, it flies away, fetches puddled clay, 

 lines the chamber, lays the eggs, and then stops up 

 the entrance with the same mortar. This, be it noticed, 

 is not " pellet " masonry. A mason bee builds its nest 

 of mud and minute pebbles. Sometimes what looks 

 like a large mud-splash thrown by a child at a wall, or 



