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The moderate diameter of the passage accounts for the Anthidium's choice of this site to which our eye can penetrate. In the common Snail-shell, whose cavity widens rapidly, the insect establishes itself much farther back, so that, in order to see the terminal partition, we must, as I have said, make a lateral inlet.
The Osmia's shells can be recognized at once, as being closed at the orifice with a clay cover. The Anthidium's call for a special examination, without which we should run a great risk of filling our pockets with cumbersome rubbish. We find a dead Snail-shell among the stones. Is it inhabited by the Resin-bee or not? The outside tells us nothing.
Certainly no foe will break in through the double rampart; but he will make an insidious attack from the rear. The Leucopsis will come and, with her long probe, thanks to some imperceptible fissure in the tube, will insert her dread eggs and destroy every single inhabitant of the fortress. Thus are the Manicate Anthidium's anxious precautions outwitted.
Earth washed in by the rain? Remnants of the putrefied Snail? That remains to be seen. With a little pocket-trowel, the inquisitorial implement which always accompanies me, I make a wide window in the middle of the final whorl. If I see a gleaming resin floor, with incrustations of gravel, the thing is settled: I possess an Anthidium's nest. But, oh the number of failures that go to one success!
The Anthidium's work comes at the bottom of the spiral, a long way from the mouth; and, though this is wide open, the eye cannot travel far enough along the winding stair. I hold up the doubtful shell to the light. If it is completely transparent, I know that it is empty and I put it back to serve for future nests. If the second whorl is opaque, the spiral contains something. What does it contain?
The same mode of work is employed by the Bembex-, Stizus-and Tachytes-wasps and other inlayers, who strengthen the inadequate woof of their cocoons with grains of sand; only, in their cotton-wool purses, the Anthidium's grubs substitute for the mineral particles the only solid materials at their disposal. For them, excrement takes the place of pebbles. And the work goes none the worse for it.
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