ales and by them alone. The
lazy sex has bethought itself of working. It turns navvy and shoots out
grains of earth that would interfere with its continual entrances and
exits. For the first time I witness a custom which no Hymenopteron had
yet shown me: I see the males haunting the interior of the burrows with
an assiduity equalling that of the mothers employed in nest-building.

The cause of these unwonted operations soon stands revealed. The females
seen flitting above the burrows are very rare; the majority of the
feminine population remain sequestered under ground, do not perhaps come
out once during the whole of the latter part of summer. Those who do
venture out go in again soon, empty-handed of course and always without
any amorous teasing from the males, a number of whom are hovering above
the burrows.

On the other hand, watch as carefully as I may, I do not discover
a single act of pairing out of doors. The weddings are clandestine,
therefore, and take place under ground. This explains the males' fussy
visits to the doors of the galleries during the hottest hours of the
day, their continual descents into the depths and their continual
reappearances. They are looking for the females cloistered in the
retirement of the cells.

A little spade-work soon turns suspicion into certainty. I unearth a
sufficient number of couples to prove to me that the sexes come together
underground. When the marriage is consummated, the red-belted one quits
the spot and goes to die outside the burrow, after dragging from flower
to flower the bit of life that remains to him. The other shuts herself
up in her cell, there to await the return of the month of May.

September is spent by the Halictus solely in nuptial celebrations.
Whenever the sky is fine, I witness the evolutions of the males above
the burrows, with their continual entrances and exits; should the sun
be veiled, they take refuge down the passages. The more impatient,
half-hidden in the pit, show their little black heads outside, as though
peeping for the least break in the clouds that will allow them to pay a
brief visit to the flowers round about. They also spend the night in the
burrows. In the morning, I attend their levee; I see them put their head
to the window, take a look at the weather and then go in again until the
sun beats on the encampment.

The same mode of life is continued throughout October, but the males
become less numerous from day to day as the