Marrubium vulgare, or common white
horehound; Ballota fetida, or stinking horehound; Calamintha nepeta,
or lesser calamint; Salvia aethiopis, or woolly sage. Lastly, the
Solanaceae: Verbascum thapsus, or shepherd's club; V. sinuatum, or
scollop-leaved mullein.

The Cotton-bees' flora, we see, incomplete as it is in my notes,
embraces plants of very different aspect. There is no resemblance in
appearance between the proud candelabrum of the cotton-thistle, with its
red tufts, and the humble stalk of the globe-thistle, with its sky-blue
capitula; between the plentiful leaves of the mullein and the scanty
foliage of the St. Barnaby's thistle; between the rich silvery fleece
of the woolly sage and the short hairs of the everlasting. With the
Anthidium, these clumsy botanical characteristics do not count; one
thing alone guides her: the presence of cotton. Provided that the plant
be more or less well-covered with soft wadding, the rest is immaterial
to her.

Another condition, however, has to be fulfilled, apart from the fineness
of the cotton-wool. The plant, to be worth shearing, must be dead and
dry. I have never seen the harvesting done on fresh plants. In this
way, the Bee avoids mildew, which would make its appearance in a mass of
hairs still filled with sap.

Faithful to the plant recognized as yielding good results, the Anthidium
arrives and resumes her gleaning on the edges of the parts denuded by
earlier harvests. Her mandibles scrape away and pass the tiny fluffs,
one by one, to the hind-legs, which hold the pellet pressed against the
chest, mix with it the rapidly-increasing store of down and make the
whole into a little ball. When this is the size of a pea, it goes back
into the mandibles; and the insect flies off, with its bale of cotton
in its mouth. If we have the patience to wait, we shall see it return to
the same point, at intervals of a few minutes, so long as the bag is not
made. The foraging for provisions will suspend the collecting of cotton;
then, next day or the day after, the scraping will be resumed on the
same stalk, on the same leaf, if the fleece be not exhausted. The owner
of a rich crop appears to keep to it until the closing-plug calls for
coarser materials; and even then this plug is often manufactured with
the same fine flock as the cells.

After ascertaining the diversity of cotton-fields among our native
plants, I naturally had to enquire whether the Cotton-bee would also
put up wit