with her work, and was v T ery busy in- 

 side a burrow about four inches deep. 

 For some time she kept up a great hum- 

 ming and buzzing, but at last the work 

 inside was finished to her satisfaction, 

 and she flew away for pollen and nectar. 

 While she was so busy on the inside she 

 was lining the small bulb-like cell at the 

 bottom of her burrow, into which she 

 now put her stores. 



The burrow must be excavated accord- 

 ing to a pattern approved by many an- 

 cestors of the bee, and should a knot or 

 decayed place be encountered which 

 would in any way interfere with this plan, 

 the little builder, after much fretting and 

 investigating, will begin another burrow. 

 The cell is made by lining the burrow 

 with sawdust, mixed with the secretion 

 from glands near the mouth, making a 

 delicate, but impermeable coating. 



The Clisodon terminalis does not have 

 baskets on its legs as does the honey bees 

 and bumble bees, but the whole outer 

 surface of the posterior legs is covered 

 with stout white hairs, forming brushes 

 in which much pollen can be carried. 



I could not discover how many loads 

 of pollen and nectar were necessary for 

 each cell, but it must have been a con- 

 siderable number, for when I opened a 

 cell I found it more than half full of a 

 pasty mass with a strong and disagree- 

 able odor. 



When sufficient food has been provided 

 the bee lays a small white egg in the 

 midst of the sticky mass, and then there 

 is more humming and buzzing while a 

 cover is made. The cover is of the same 

 material as the cell-lining, but several 

 times as thick, for upon it another cell 



must rest — in some cases three or four, 

 though the burrow always slants so that 

 the whole of the weight of the upper cells 

 will not rest upon the lowest one. 



The egg soon hatches into a small 

 white grub and all the provisions are 

 used by it as it grows larger until it just 

 fits snugly into the small bulb so artis- 

 tically formed by the mother. Now it 

 rests quietly until the summer sun makes 

 possible the various processes necessary 

 in changing a grub into a bee. Then the 

 young bee, with its strong jaws, cuts 

 through into the next cell and if all has 

 gone well, it is then free to crawl into the 

 bright world, but if the growth of the bee 

 in any of the cells above it has been re- 

 tarded or stopped, it is said that the 

 young bee waits, even dying in its small 

 prison house so strong is its instinct 

 against harming one of its own kind. 



We hear much of the unerring instinct 

 of animals, and a creature with such skill 

 and agility as Clisodon terminalis might 

 be supposed to possess such instinct in 

 a high degree, yet I found in the half 

 dozen burrows that I studied several cells 

 that had been provisioned and sealed, but 

 which contained no egg\ 



The genus to which this bee belongs 

 has been separated from Anthophora on 

 account of its three-toothed mandibles, 

 the Anthophora having mandibles with 

 two teeth. It is interesting to see how 

 this difference in structure corresponds 

 with so marked a difference in habit, for 

 the Anthophoras nest in the earth and 

 do not need as complex tools as a bee 

 that must cut several inches through 

 hard wood. 



Wilvtatte Porter Cockerell. 



128 



