The Life of the Bee 



We have seen the unfortunate Prosopis 

 silently bearing her solitary little destiny 

 in the midst of this vast universe charged 

 with terrible forces. A certain number 

 of her sisters, belonging to species already 

 more skilful and better supplied with 

 utensils, such as the well-clad Colletes, 

 or the marvellous cutter of rose-leaves, 

 the Megachile • Centuncularis, live in 

 an isolation no less profound; and if 

 by chance some creature attach itself to 

 them, and share their dwelling, it will 

 either be an enemy, or, more often, a 

 parasite. 



For the world of bees is peopled with 

 phantoms stranger than our own ; and 

 many a species will thus have a kind of 

 mysterious and inactive double, exactly 

 similar to the victim it has selected, save 

 only that its immemorial idleness has 

 caused it to lose one by one its imple- 

 ments of labour, and that it exists solely 

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