should these be lacking, is ready to replace
them with something else. Moreover, the defensive inlaying is slight;
we see that the insect attaches no great importance to it and has every
confidence in the stout wall of the home.

The material of which the work is made at first suggests some rustic
wax, much coarser than that of the Bumble-bees, or rather some tar
of unknown origin. We think again and then recognize in the puzzling
substance the semitransparent fracture, the quality of becoming soft
when exposed to heat and of burning with a smoky flame, the solubility
in spirits of wine--in short, all the distinguishing characteristics
of resin. Here then are two more collectors of the exudations of the
Coniferae. At the points where I find their nests are Aleppo pines,
cypresses, brown-berried junipers and common junipers. Which of the four
supplies the mastic? There is nothing to tell us. Nor is there anything
to explain how the native amber-colour of the resin is replaced in the
work of both Bees by a dark-brown hue resembling that of pitch. Does the
insect collect resin impaired by the weather, soiled by the sanies of
rotten wood? When kneading it, does it mix some dark ingredient with it?
I look upon this as possible, but not as proved, since I have never seen
the Bee collecting her resin.

While this point escapes me, another of higher interest appears most
plainly; and that is the large amount of resinous material used in a
single nest, especially in that of Anthidium quadrilobum, in which I
have counted as many as twelve cells. The nest of the Mason-bee of
the Pebbles is hardly more massive. For so costly an establishment,
therefore, the Resin-bee collects her pitch on the dead pine as
copiously as the Mason-bee collects her mortar on the macadamized
road. Her workshop no longer shows us the niggardly partitioning of a
Snail-shell with two or three drops of resin; what we see is the whole
building of the house, from the basement to the roof, from the thick
outer walls to the partitions of the rooms. The cement expended would
be enough to divide hundreds of Snail-shells, wherefore the title of
Resin-bee is due first and foremost to this master-builder in pitch.
Honourable mention should be awarded to A. Latreillii, who rivals
her fellow-worker as far as her smaller stature permits. The other
manipulators of resin, those who build partitions in Snail-shells, come
third, a very long way behind.

And now, with t