summit of a tiny mole-hill begins to totter and tumbles
down the slopes of the cone: it is a worker coming up with her armful
of rubbish and shooting it outside, without showing herself in the open.
Nothing more for the moment.

There is one precaution to be taken: the villages must be protected
against the passers-by, who might inadvertently trample them under foot.
I surround each of them with a palisade of reed-stumps. In the centre
I plant a danger-signal, a post with a paper flag. The sections of the
paths thus marked are forbidden ground; none of the household will walk
upon them.

May arrives, gay with flowers and sunshine. The navvies of April have
turned themselves into harvesters. At every moment I see them settling,
all befloured with yellow, atop of the mole-hills now turned into
craters. Let us first look into the question of the house. The
arrangement of the home will give us some useful information. A spade
and a three-pronged fork place the insect's crypts before our eyes.

A shaft as nearly vertical as possible, straight or winding according to
the exigencies of a soil rich in flinty remains, descends to a depth of
between eight and twelve inches. As it is merely a passage in which the
only thing necessary is that the Halictus should find an easy support in
coming and going, this long entrance-hall is rough and uneven. A regular
shape and a polished surface would be out of place here. These artistic
refinements are reserved for the apartments of her young. All that the
Halictus mother asks is that the passage should be easy to go up and
down, to ascend or descend in a hurry. And so she leaves it rugged. Its
width is about that of a thick lead-pencil.

Arranged one by one, horizontally and at different heights, the cells
occupy the basement of the house. They are oval cavities, three-quarters
of an inch long, dug out of the clay mass. They end in a short
bottle-neck that widens into a graceful mouth. They look like tiny
vaccine-phials laid on their sides. All of them open into the passage.

The inside of these little cells has the gloss and polish of a stucco
which our most experienced plasterers might envy. It is diapered with
faint longitudinal, diamond-shaped marks. These are the traces of the
polishing-tool that has given the last finish to the work. What can this
polisher be? None other than the tongue, that is obvious. The Halictus
has made a trowel of her tongue and licked the wall daintily an