50 INSECT ARCHITECTURK. 



This plate of course exhibits concentric circles, some- 

 what similar to the annual circles in the cross section 

 of a tree. In the same manner she proceeds till she 

 has completed ten or twelve cells ; and then she closes 

 the main entrance with a barrier of similar materials. 



Let us compare the progress of this little joiner with 

 a human artisan — one who has been long practised in 

 his trade, and has the most perfect and complicated 

 tools for his assistance. The bee has learnt nothing 

 by practice ; she makes her nest but once in her life, 

 but it is then as complete and finished as if she had 

 made a thousand. She lias no pattern before her — 

 but the Architect of all things has impressed a plan 

 upon her mind, which she can realize without scale 

 or compasses. Her two sharp teeth are the only 

 tools with which she is provided for her laborious 

 work; and yet she bores a tunnel, twelve times the 

 length of her own body, with greater ease than the 

 workman who bores into the earth for water, with 

 his apparatus of augers adapted to every soil. Her 

 tunnel is clean and regular ; she leaves no chips at 

 the bottom, for she is provident of her materials. 

 Further, she has an exquisite piece of joinery to per- 

 form, when her ruder labour is accomplished. The 

 patient bee works her rings from the circumference 

 to the centre, and she produces a shelf, united with 

 such care with her natural glue, that a number of 

 fragments are as solid as one piece. 



The violet carpenter-bee, as may be expected, oc- 

 cupies several weeks in these complicated labours ; 

 and during that period she is gradually depositing 

 her eggs, each of which is successively to become 

 a grub, a pupa, and a perfect bee. It is obvious, 

 therefore, as she does not lay all her eggs in the 

 same place — as each is separated from the other by 

 a laborious process — that the egg which is first laid 

 will be the earliest hatched ; and that the first perfect 



