ned. I perforate the bottom in
the same way and let out the honey, which drips through gradually. The
owners of these are building.

Judging by what has gone before, the reader will perhaps expect to see
immediate repairs, urgent repairs, for the safety of the future larva is
at stake. Let him dismiss any such illusion: more and more journeys are
undertaken, now in quest of food, now in quest of mortar; but not one of
the Mason-bees troubles about the disastrous breach. The harvester goes
on harvesting; the busy bricklayer proceeds with her next row of bricks,
as though nothing out of the way had happened. Lastly, if the injured
cells are high enough and contain enough provisions, the Bee lays her
eggs, puts a door to the house and passes on to another house, without
doing aught to remedy the leakage of the honey. Two or three days later,
those cells have lost all their contents, which now form a long trail on
the surface of the nest.

Is it through lack of intelligence that the Bee allows her honey to go
to waste? May it not rather be through helplessness? It might happen
that the sort of mortar which the Mason has at her disposal will not set
on the edges of a hole that is sticky with honey. The honey may prevent
the cement from adjusting itself to the orifice, in which case the
insect's inertness would merely be resignation to an irreparable evil.
Let us look into the matter before drawing inferences. With my forceps,
I deprive the Bee of her pellet of mortar and apply it to the hole
whence the honey is escaping. My attempt at repairing meets with the
fullest success, though I do not pretend to compete with the Mason
in dexterity. For a piece of work done by a man's hand it is quite
creditable. My dab of mortar fits nicely into the mutilated wall;
it hardens as usual; and the escape of honey ceases. This is quite
satisfactory. What would it be had the work been done by the insect,
equipped with its tools of exquisite precision? When the Mason-bee
refrains, therefore, this is not due to helplessness on her part, nor to
any defect in the material employed.

Another objection presents itself. We are going too far perhaps in
admitting this concatenation of ideas in the insect's mind, in expecting
it to argue that the honey is running away because the cell has a hole
in it and that to save it from being wasted the hole must be stopped.
So much logic perhaps exceeds the powers of its poor little brain.
Then, again, the