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Not so either; for, in the same stone-heaps where the Osmia and the two Resin-bees of the Snail-shells work, I find from time to time another manipulator of mastic who bears no structural relationship whatever to the genus Anthidium.
There is another fruit which grows on high trees, and resembles the pippin in its pleasing smell and savor; a great quantity of ginger grows wild there, as also of the herb chiquilite, from which indigo is made. Marble is also to be seen, as well as pearl shells and large snail-shells, like those brought from China. There is a very copious spring and five or six rivers of small volume.
The natives were burning the scrubs west and north-west. On the bare rocks of this mountain we saw several white, bleached snail-shells. I was grieved to find that my barometer had met with an accident in our climb; however, by testing the boiling point of water I obtained the altitude.
The excellence of the locality is responsible for this frequent cohabitation, shelter being provided by the broken stone from the quarry and lodgings by the shells which the Mouse has left behind. At places where dead Snail-shells are few and far between, as in the crevices of rustic walls, each Bee occupies by herself the shells which she has found.
Neptune sat, with her back rigid, protesting against circumstances, and set the radiant stranger down beside her; then, with her hands clasped behind her, and brows bent, she considered the pair long and attentively. Truly they were a strange contrast: the delicate, glowing, velvet-clad doll, and the battered old wooden image, with eyes of snail-shells and hair of brown sea-moss.
But, of this total number, I must use only those series which received an entire laying and were occupied by the same Osmia from the beginning to the end of the egg-season. Here are a few examples, taken from among the most conclusive. From the 6th of May, when she started operations, to the 25th of May, the date at which her laying ceased, one Osmia occupied seven Snail-shells in succession.
First he voted himself to gathering snail-shells, of which there are many sorts; afterwards he had a fever for marbles, pieces of which he found on the banks of the Tiber, just on the edge of its muddy waters, and in the Palace of the Caesars, the Baths of Caracalla, and indeed wherever else his fancy led him; verde antique, rosso antico, porphyry, giallo antico, serpentine, sometimes fragments of bas-reliefs and mouldings, bits of mosaic, still firmly stuck together, on which the foot of a Caesar had perhaps once trodden; pieces of Roman glass, with the iridescence glowing on them; and all such things, of which the soil of Rome is full.
The body, black as polished ebony, was naked to the waist, whence a white skirt fell to the knees. The arms and legs were adorned with bracelets and anklets of ivory, while the straps of the heavy sandals were bordered with snail-shells. On the left arm he bore a round shield of rhinoceros hide embossed in brass; in the right hand, a pointless lance.
When the Field-mouse has left behind him a rich collection of empty shells scattered all round his hay mattress under the slab, there is always a hope of finding some Snail-shells plugged with mud and, here and there, mixed with them, a few Snail-shells closed with resin. The two Bees work next door to each other, one using clay, the other gum.
"Listen!" he said in low, gruff voice. He held out an open palm, three snail-shells in it, signifying that they should take one each. "Listen!" he repeated, and put the smallest shell against his own ear. "D'you hear that curious sound?" His head was cocked sideways, one ear pressed tight against the shell, the other open to the sky.
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