comes away with it, leaving the edges badly broken. In my
awkwardness, I have turned an elegant vase into a wretched cracked pot.

I was right in my conjecture: the Bee's intention was to break open the
door. Straight away, without heeding the raggedness of the orifice, she
settles down in the cell which I have opened for her. Time after
time, she fetches honey and pollen, though the larder is already fully
stocked. Lastly, she lays her egg in this cell which already contains an
egg that is not hers, having done which she closes the broken aperture
to the best of her ability. So this purveyor had neither the knowledge
nor the power to bow to the inevitable. I had made it impossible for her
to go on with her purveying, unless she first completed the unfinished
cell substituted for her own. But she did not retreat before that
impossible task. She accomplished her work, but in the absurdest way: by
injuriously trespassing upon another's property, by continuing to store
provisions in a cupboard already full to overflowing, by laying her
egg in a cell in which the real owner had already laid and lastly by
hurriedly closing an orifice that called for serious repairs. What
better proof could be wished of the irresistible propensity which the
insect obeys?

Lastly, there are certain swift and consecutive actions so closely
interlinked that the performance of the second demands a previous
repetition of the first, even when this action has become useless. I
have already described how the Yellow-winged Sphex (Cf. "Insect Life":
chapters 6 to 9.--Translator's Note.) persists in descending into
her burrow alone, after depositing at its edge the Cricket whom I
maliciously at once remove. Her repeated discomfitures do not make her
abandon the preliminary inspection of the home, an inspection which
becomes quite useless when renewed for the tenth or twentieth time.
The Mason-bee of the Walls shows us, under another form, a similar
repetition of an act which is useless in itself, but which is the
compulsory preface to the act that follows. When arriving with her
provisions, the Bee performs a twofold operation of storing. First, she
dives head foremost into the cell, to disgorge the contents of her crop;
next, she comes out and at once goes in again backwards, to brush her
abdomen and rub off the load of pollen. At the moment when the insect
is about to enter the cell tail first, I push her aside gently with a
straw. The second act is