372 



HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



not less interesting structures of another group of bees, 

 which carry on the trade of masons (^Megachile muraria), 

 building their solid houses solely of artificial stone. The 

 first step of the mother bee is to fix upon a proper situation 

 for the future mansion of her offspring. For this she 

 usually selects an angle, sheltered by any projection, on 

 the south side of a stone wall. Her next care is to pro- 

 vide materials for the structure. The chief of these is sand, 

 which she carefully selects grain by grain from such as 

 contains some mixture of earth. These grains she glues to- 

 gether with her viscid saliva into masses the size of small 

 shot, and transports by means of her jaws to the site of her 

 castle. ^ With a number of these masses, which are the ar- 

 tificial stone of which her building is to be composed, united 

 by a cement preferable to ours, she first forms the basis or 

 foundation of the whole. Next she raises the walls of a cell, 

 which is about an inch in length, and half an inch broad, and, 

 before its orifice is closed, in form resembles a thimble. This, 

 after depositing an egg and a supply of honey and pollen, she 

 covers in, and then proceeds to the erection of a second, 

 which she finishes in the same manner, until the whole num- 

 ber, which varies from four to eight, is completed. The 

 vacuities between the cells, which are not placed in any re- 

 gular order, some being parallel to the wall, others perpen- 

 dicular to it, and others inclined to it at different angles, this 

 laborious architect fills up with the same material of which 

 the cells are composed, and then bestows upon the whole 

 group a common covering of coarser grains of sand. The 

 form of the whole nest, which when finished is a solid mass 

 of stone so hard as not to be easily penetrated with the blade 

 of a knife, is an irregular oblong of the same colour as the 

 sand, and to a casual observer more resembling a splash of 

 mud than an artificial structure. These bees sometimes are 

 more economical of their labour, and repair old nests, for the 

 possession of which they have very desperate combats. One 

 would have supposed that the inhabitants of a castle so for- 



1 Reaumui- plausibly supposes that it has been from observing this bee thus 

 loaded, that the tale, mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny, of the hive-bee's bal- 

 lasting itself with a bit of stone previously to flying home in a high w'm^ has 

 arisen. 



