174 
Psyche 
[September 
neighborhood. Moreover there were then in this immediate 
area no females, nor were any nests in construction. This 
was conspicuously different from the south end, where 
activities were occurring, in small numbers to be sure, but 
further advanced, since there the males had departed and 
the females were nesting. This playfulness of the males at 
the north end seemed to be merely a repetition of the male 
frolics at the south end some ten days before. 
A visit to the bank on August 14th showed that the 
females and their burrows were becoming more numerous. 
At the south end, the males were again in abundance, 
buzzing, flying, dancing about and repeating the perfor- 
mance of leg-pulling and leg-biting. The females were still 
burrowing in the top surface of the bank; none had as yet 
gone into its vertical face. Few of the females would work 
after the sun had left the bank at about noon, and the males 
too were most active in the sunlight. 
The method of digging and building was in most of its 
details similar to that of Anthophora abrupta, previously 
described. The Entechnia taurea female carried water with 
which to moisten the clay before she bit off a mouthful. One 
mother was observed to begin her burrow at 11 a.m. She 
stood on her head in a vertical position, with the abdomen 
waving in the air, and worked the soil, often leaving the 
work to go for water. At 2 :30 p.m. the hole went down to 
a considerable depth, and over its top was a little turret 
about three-fourths inch in length. There was much loose, 
w T et soil about and under this turret, showing that not all 
of the mud carried out had gone into the tube. The bee was 
at work within, and every few seconds she appeared walk- 
ing backwards and pushing up a pile of moist, fine-cut soil. 
Many turrets had beneath them a similar accumulation of 
clay which had been dumped out of the burrow, (fig. 9E) 
so that one may say that only the portions first removed 
go into making the chimney, and the remainder of the clay 
that comes out of the burrow is loosely pushed out. 
One mother had been busily occupied at nest building 
for three hours, when suddenly a male appeared upon the 
scene, hovering over her. Quick as a flash she quit her 
work, and her precipitous haste in attempting to clean her- 
