94 
A MOTHER-BEE’S LABOURS. 
rounding Fontainebleau concentrated upon it the summer heats, we were 
astonished at the incessant and continuous labour, despite the indo¬ 
lence of the season, of a solitary bee which was ever going and coming. 
Her indefatigable journeys always brought her near some vases of 
camelias and rose-bays. I saw her, still fair and shapely, of a beautiful 
brown mingled with black, returning, at regular intervals of about 
five minutes, with woven fragments of leaves, which she introduced 
through a deep aperture into the soil of the vase where she had made 
her nest. 
For three days she worked with undiminished ardour. There were 
no signs that she took the least food : constantly at her work, she 
appeared to have already abandoned all care for her own life. 
Her preoccupation was so great and her activity so eager that we 
were able to approach her very closely. Nothing frightened her; so 
that we could establish ourselves at our ease near her little nest, and 
observe her with as much patience as she herself brought to her 
work. 
On the fourth morning we found the opening closed, and we saw 
her no more. She had completed her task. Exhausted, but rejoicing 
at its conclusion, she had retired undoubtedly to some obscure recess 
to await her destiny. 
We proceeded delicately to loosen the soil around the sides of the 
vase, in order to examine into what she had done. 
At the bottom, resembling in shape a couple of thimbles, lay two 
cradles, and in these cradles two little ones. All the care had been for 
them: so many young, so many cells. 
Each was composed of six-and-twenty fragments of leaves. Reau¬ 
mur, in a similar nest, counted but sixteen. Six of these fragments, 
which closed up the entrance, were perfectly round,—a remarkable 
fact, if we bear in mind that the instrument which achieved the work 
was by no means appropriate to it. Yet they were as accurately 
finished off as if done by a punch. 
The other portions of leaf, cut into ovals, and carefully placed one 
upon another in due accordance with the contour of the nest, resembled 
so many roofs designed by the indefatigable mother as a protection 
