y the same name. I surrender
to those whom it concerns the honour of effecting this reform in the
orthodox fashion.

Good luck, the friend of the persevering, made me acquainted in
different parts of Vaucluse with four Resin-bees whose singular trade
no one had yet suspected. To-day, I find them all four again in my own
neighbourhood. They are the following: Anthidium septemdentatum, LATR.,
A. bellicosum, LEP., A. quadrilobum, LEP., and A. Latreillii, LEP.
The first two make their nests in deserted Snail-shells; the other two
shelter their groups of cells sometimes in the ground, sometimes under a
large stone. We will first discuss the inhabitants of the Snail-shell.
I made a brief reference to them in an earlier chapter, when speaking of
the distribution of the sexes. This mere allusion, suggested by a study
of a different kind, must now be amplified. I return to it with fuller
particulars.

The stone-heaps in the Roman quarries near Serignan, which I have so
often visited in search of the nests of the Osmia who takes up her abode
in Snail-shells, supply me also with the two Resin-bees installed
in similar quarters. When the Field-mouse has left behind him a rich
collection of empty shells scattered all round his hay mattress under
the slab, there is always a hope of finding some Snail-shells plugged
with mud and, here and there, mixed with them, a few Snail-shells closed
with resin. The two Bees work next door to each other, one using clay,
the other gum. The excellence of the locality is responsible for this
frequent cohabitation, shelter being provided by the broken stone from
the quarry and lodgings by the shells which the Mouse has left behind.

At places where dead Snail-shells are few and far between, as in the
crevices of rustic walls, each Bee occupies by herself the shells which
she has found. But here, in the quarries, our crop will certainly be
a double or even a treble one, for both Resin-bees frequent the same
heaps. Let us, therefore, lift the stones and dig into the mound until
the excessive dampness of the subsoil tells us that it is useless to
look lower down. Sometimes at the moment of removing the first layer,
sometimes at a depth of eighteen inches, we shall find the Osmia's
Snail-shell and, much more rarely, the Resin-bee's. Above all, patience!
The job is none of the most fruitful; nor is it exactly an agreeable
one. By dint of turning over uncommonly jagged stones, our fingertips
get hurt, lo