)), a very large Bee of
formidable appearance, clad in black velvet with violet-coloured wings.
The mother gives her larvae as a dwelling a cylindrical gallery which
she digs in rotten wood. Useless timber lying exposed to the air,
vine-poles, large logs of fire-wood seasoning out of doors, heaped up
in front of the farmhouse porch, stumps of trees, vine-stocks and big
branches of all kinds are her favourite building-yards. A solitary and
industrious worker, she bores, bit by bit, circular passages the width
of one's thumb, as clear-cut as though they were made with an auger.
A heap of saw-dust accumulates on the ground and bears witness to the
severity of the task. Usually, the same aperture is the entrance to
two or three parallel corridors. With several galleries there is
accommodation for the entire laying, though each gallery is quite
short; and the Bee thus avoids those long series which always create
difficulties when the moment of hatching arrives. The laggards and the
insects eager to emerge are less likely to get in each other's way.

After obtaining the dwelling, the Carpenter-bee behaves like the Osmia
who is in possession of a reed. Provisions are collected, the egg is
laid and the chamber is walled in front with a saw-dust partition. The
work is pursued in this way until the two or three passages composing
the house are completely stocked. Heaping up provisions and erecting
partitions are an invariable feature of the Xylocopa's programme; no
circumstance can release the mother from the duty of providing for the
future of her family, in the matter both of ready-prepared food and of
separate compartments for the rearing of each larva. It is only in
the boring of the galleries, the most laborious part of the work, that
economy can occasionally be exercised by a piece of luck. Well, is the
powerful Carpenter, all unheeding of fatigue, able to take advantage of
such fortunate occasions? Does she know how to make use of houses which
she has not tunnelled herself? Why, yes: a free lodging suits her just
as much as it does the various Mason-bees. She knows as well as they the
economic advantages of an old nest that is still in good condition: she
settles down, as far as possible, in her predecessors' galleries, after
freshening up the sides with a superficial scraping. And she does better
still. She readily accepts lodgings which have never known a drill, no
matter whose. The stout reeds used in the trellis-work th