174 



THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. 



mass, hatching is produced, and the young emerge 

 from their primitive nest. 



Birds are not alone in constructing temporary 

 dweUings in which to lay their eggs ; some Fish are 

 equally artistic in this kind of industry, and even 

 certain Reptiles. The Alligator of the Mississippi 

 would not perhaps at first be regarded as a model 

 of maternal foresiglit. Yet the female constructs a 

 genuine nest. She seeks a very inaccessible spot in 

 the midst of brushwood and thickets of reeds. With 

 her jaw she carries thither boughs which she arranges 



on the soil and 

 covers with leaves. 

 She lays her eggs 

 and conceals them 

 with care beneath 

 vegetable remains. 

 Not yet consider- 

 ing her work com- 

 pleted, she stays in 

 the neighbourhood 

 watching with jeal- 

 ous eye the thicket 

 which shelters the dear deposit, and never ceases to 

 mount guard threateningly until the day when her 

 young ones can follow her into the stream. 



A hymenopterous relative of the Bees, the Megachik, 

 cuts out in rose-leaves fragments of appropriate form 

 which it bears away to a small hole in a tree, an 

 abandoned mouse nest or some similar cavity. There 

 it rolls them, works them up, and arranges them with 

 much art, so as to manufacture what resemble thimbles, 

 which it fills with honey and in which it lays.^ (Fig. 24.) 



^ Reaumur, Memoires pour sejijtr d Vhistoiredes InsecicSt pp. 97 et seq. 



Fig. 24 



