rhaps for economical reasons.

I notice, in fact, that the leaves of this shrub, instead of being
used piecemeal, are employed whole, when they do not exceed the proper
dimensions. Their oval form and their moderate size suit the insect's
requirements; and there is therefore no necessity to cut them into
pieces. The leaf-stalk is clipped with the scissors and, without more
ado, the Megachile retires the richer by a first-rate bit of material.

Split up into their component parts, two cells give me altogether
eighty-three pieces of leaves, whereof eighteen are smaller than the
others and of a round shape. The last-named come from the lids. If they
average forty-two each, the seventeen cells of the nest represent seven
hundred and fourteen pieces. These are not all: the nest ends, in the
Capricorn's vestibule, with a stout barricade in which I count three
hundred and fifty pieces. The total therefore amounts to one thousand
and sixty-four. All those journeys and all that work with the scissors
to furnish the deserted chamber of the Cerambyx! If I did not know the
Leaf-cutter's solitary and jealous disposition, I should attribute the
huge structure to the collaboration of several mothers; but there is
no question of communism in this case. One dauntless creature and one
alone, one solitary, inveterate worker, has produced the whole of
the prodigious mass. If work is the best way to enjoy life, this one
certainly has not been bored during the few weeks of her existence.

I gladly award her the most honourable of eulogies, that due to the
industrious; and I also compliment her on her talent for closing the
honey-pots. The pieces stacked into lids are round and have nothing
to suggest those of which the cells and the final barricade are made.
Excepting the first, those nearest the honey, they are perhaps cut a
little less neatly than the disks of the White-girdled Leaf-cutter; no
matter: they stop the jar perfectly, especially when there are some ten
of them one above the other. When cutting them, the Bee was as sure of
her scissors as a dressmaker guided by a pattern laid on the stuff; and
yet she was cutting without a model, without having in front of her the
mouth to be closed. To enlarge on this interesting subject would mean to
repeat oneself. All the Leaf-cutters have the same talent for making the
lids of their pots.

A less mysterious question than this geometrical problem is that of the
materials. Does each specie