onditions brought into play to produce a result
apparently so contrary to the laws of nature? Humble yourself in the
presence of the reality and confess your ignorance, rather than attempt
to hide your embarrassment under vain explanations!

'If the first egg laid by the busy mother were destined to be the
first-born of the Odyneri, that one, in order to see the light
immediately after achieving wings, would have had the option either of
breaking through the double walls of his prison or of perforating, from
bottom to top, the seven shells ahead of him, in order to emerge through
the truncate end of the bramble-stem. Now nature, while refusing any
way of escape laterally, was also bound to veto any direct invasion, the
brutal gimlet-work which would inevitably have sacrificed seven members
of one family for the safety of an only son. Nature is as ingenious in
design as she is fertile in resource, and she must have foreseen and
forestalled every difficulty. She decided that the last-built cradle
should yield the first-born child; that this one should clear the road
for his next oldest brother, the second for the third and so on. And
this is the order in which the birth of our Odyneri of the Brambles
actually takes place.'

Yes, my revered master, I will admit without hesitation that the
bramble-dwellers leave their sheath in the converse order to that of
their ages: the youngest first, the oldest last; if not invariably, at
least very often. But does the hatching, by which I mean the emergence
from the cocoon, take place in the same order? Does the evolution of
the elder wait upon that of the younger, so that each may give those who
would bar his passage time to effect their deliverance and to leave
the road clear? I very much fear that logic has carried your deductions
beyond the bounds of reality. Rationally speaking, my dear sir, nothing
could be more accurate than your inferences; and yet we must forgo
the theory of the strange inversion which you suggest. None of the
Bramble-bees with whom I have experimented behaves after that fashion.
I know nothing personal about Odynerus rubicola, who appears to be a
stranger in my district; but, as the method of leaving must be almost
the same when the habitation is exactly similar, it is enough, I think,
to experiment with some of the bramble-dwellers in order to learn the
history of the rest.

My studies will, by preference, bear upon the Three-pronged Osmia, who
lends her