United States or Liechtenstein ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But half an hour has not elapsed before death is imminent. The insect lies motionless upon its back or side. At most, a few movements of the legs, a slight pulsation of the belly, continuing till the morrow, proclaim that life has not yet entirely departed. Then everything ceases: the Carpenter-bee is a corpse. The importance of this experiment compels our attention.
I first tried the effects of the bite upon the Carpenter-bee. When struck in the neck, the Bee succumbs at once. It was the lightning death which I witnessed on the threshold of the burrows. When struck in the abdomen and then placed in a large bottle that leaves its movements free, the insect seems, at first, to have suffered no serious injury. It flutters about and buzzes.
I showed myself a ready pupil to my masters' teaching and used to paralyze a Buprestis or a Weevil almost as well as a Cerceris could have done. Why should I not to-day imitate that expert butcher, the Tarantula? With the point of a fine needle, I inject a tiny drop of ammonia at the base of the skull of a Carpenter-bee or a Grasshopper.
Fortune at last smiles upon my patience, which has been heavily tried by all these prudent retreats and particularly by the fierce heat of the dog- days. A Spider suddenly rushes from her hole: she has been rendered warlike, doubtless, by prolonged abstinence. The tragedy that happens under the cover of the bottle lasts for but the twinkling of an eye. It is over: the sturdy Carpenter-bee is dead.
The largest and most imposing of our sting-bearers, the Carpenter-bee, the Bumble-bee, the Hornet, cut a poor figure beside certain of the Scoliae.
The laggards and the insects eager to emerge are less likely to get in each other's way. After obtaining the dwelling, the Carpenter-bee behaves like the Osmia who is in possession of a reed. Provisions are collected, the egg is laid and the chamber is walled in front with a saw-dust partition.
When the Spider hastens up at once, when she is of a good size, when she climbs boldly to the aperture of her dwelling, she is admitted to the tourney; otherwise, she is refused. The bottle, baited with a Carpenter-bee, is placed upside down over the door of one of the elect.
Her mining calls for too great an expenditure of time and strength to leave her the leisure for luxurious furnishing. Chambers and corridors, therefore, will remain bare. The Carpenter-bee gives us the same answer.
A single entrance-hole gives access to three or four parallel galleries, assembled in a serried group; and these galleries are subdivided into cells by means of saw-dust partitions. Following the example of the big Carpenter-bee, Lithurgus chrysurus knows how to avoid the laborious work of boring, when occasion offers: I find her cocoons lodged almost as often in old dormitories as in new ones.
Therefore the Carpenter-bee, after the tedious work of boring, gets the installation done in the most summary fashion, simply running up a sawdust partition. The two things, the laborious business of obtaining a lodging and the artistic work of furnishing, seem unable to go together. With the insect as with man, he who builds the house does not furnish it, he who furnishes it does not build it.
Word Of The Day