MEGACHILE. 
277 
perpendicularly to her body. In a direct line she wings 
her way to the receptacle, and arrived at the mouth of 
the aperture within which she has to convey it, she rolls 
it to its requisite tubular form and thrusts it forward to 
the bottom of the cavity. The first piece for the lining 
of each cell is always oval and larger in proportion than 
the succeeding ones, which, to the number of three or 
four, are semicircular, the first piece having an extra 
use to serve in forming a concave bottom to the cavity. 
Having completed the requisite manipulation, for ad¬ 
justing it to shape the external lining of the bottom and 
sides of the first cell, she withdraws backwards, again 
flies off, and, as if she had traced a trail in the air, or 
had marked its limpidity with a frothy surge, like 
that left in the wake of a ship, to note the road for 
her return, back she wends to the same plant, and proxi- 
mately to the spot of her recent triumphant exploit re¬ 
news the operation, but the result of which, this time, is 
to be semicircular. Home she flies again, and the ar¬ 
rangement within of this piece is different to that of the 
first, for this is simply tubular, and so placed that it 
imbricates with its cut margin within the serrated edge 
of the first and the third, and in case of a fourth the 
fourth also is similarly placed, so that one laps within the 
other, the edges of two of these cuttings never being 
conterminous. The number of the coatings is apparently 
regulated by the drier or moister condition of the sub¬ 
stance in which the tunnel is drilled. Another duty has 
now to be performed, indeed, that for which all the pre¬ 
ceding labours were undertaken,—the provision for its 
young, wherein it perpetuates its kind,—and thus on 
and on flows the wonderful stream of life, whose origin 
who shall estimate through the millennia it has hitherto 
