Sheds. Then and then alone the Mason rests; but it
is a rest that is in a sense equivalent to work, for, thus placed, she
blocks the entrance to the honey-store and defends her treasure against
twilight or night marauders.

Being anxious to form some estimate of the total distance covered by the
Bee in the construction and provisioning of a single cell, I counted the
number of steps from a nest to the road where the mortar was mixed and
from the same nest to the sainfoin-field where the harvest was gathered.
I took such note as my patience permitted of the journeys made in both
directions; and, completing these data with a comparison between the
work done and that which remained to do, I arrived at nine and a half
miles as the result of the total travelling. Of course, I give this
figure only as a rough calculation; greater precision would have
demanded more perseverance than I can boast.

Such as it is, the result, which is probably under the actual figure in
many cases, is of a kind that gives us a vivid idea of the Mason-bee's
activity. The complete nest will comprise about fifteen cells. Moreover,
the heap of cells will be coated at the end with a layer of cement a
good finger's-breadth thick. This massive fortification, which is less
finished than the rest of the work but more expensive in materials,
represents perhaps in itself one half of the complete task, so that,
to establish her dome, Chalicodoma muraria, coming and going across the
arid table-land, traverses altogether a distance of 275 miles, which
is nearly half of the greatest dimension of France from north to south.
Afterwards, when, worn out with all this fatigue, the Bee retires to a
hiding-place to languish in solitude and die, she is surely entitled to
say:

'I have laboured, I have done my duty!'

Yes, certainly, the Mason has toiled with a vengeance. To ensure the
future of her offspring, she has spent her own life without reserve, her
long life of five or six weeks' duration; and now she breathes her last,
contented because everything is in order in the beloved house: copious
rations of the first quality; a shelter against the winter frosts;
ramparts against incursions of the enemy. Everything is in order,
at least so she thinks; but, alas, what a mistake the poor mother is
making! Here the hateful fatality stands revealed, aspera fata, which
ruins the producer to provide a living for the drone; here we see the
stupid and ferocious law that sa