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With the Anthidium, these clumsy botanical characteristics do not count; one thing alone guides her: the presence of cotton. Provided that the plant be more or less well-covered with soft wadding, the rest is immaterial to her. Another condition, however, has to be fulfilled, apart from the fineness of the cotton-wool. The plant, to be worth shearing, must be dead and dry.
Judging from her appearance, the transformists tell us that she was an Anthidium, that is to say, she used to gather the soft cotton-wool from the dry stalks of the lanate plants and fashion it into wallets, in which to heap up the pollen-dust which she gleaned from the flowers by means of a brush carried on her abdomen.
However lively the impression made upon the mother, the accidental leaves no trace in the offspring. Chance plays no part in the genesis of the instincts. Next to these tenants of the Snail-shells we have two other Resin-bees who never come to the shells for a cabin for their nests. They are Anthidium quadrilobum, LEP., and A. Latreillii, LEP., both exceedingly uncommon in my district.
Allow me, my learned master, to whisper in your ear what I saw. The first that I examine is Anthidium septemdentatum. A spoon: yes, it is just that. Powerful mandibles, shaped like an isosceles triangle, flat above, hollowed out below; and no indentations, none whatsoever.
I fall back upon a fissure, a lack of continuity somewhere, although my examination fails to discover any on the Mason-bee's nest. I was better served in another case. Leucopsis dorsigera, FAB., settles her eggs on the larva of the Diadem Anthidium, who sometimes makes her nest in reed-stumps. I have repeatedly seen her insert her auger through a slight rupture in the side of the reed.
Barnaby's thistle, the usual purveyor. In fact, I place a few stalks of clary and Babylonian centaury, duly dried, near the reed-hives. The Diadem Anthidium is not long in discovering the rich harvest.
Well, apart from a few irregularities, due either to cocoons whose larva perished in my tubes before developing, or to those inexperienced workers, the males, the result was the same in the case of Anthidium scapulare. The insects divided themselves into two equal batches, one going to the right, the other to the left. Tripoxylon figulus left me undecided.
The smallest insect village has become familiar to me: I know each fruit-branch where the Praying Mantis perches; each bush where the pale Italian Cricket strums amid the calmness of the summer nights; each downy plant scraped by the Anthidium, that maker of cotton bags; each cluster of lilac worked by the Megachile, the Leaf-cutter. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. vi. to ix.
Three species, Anthidium diadema, A. manicatum and A. florentinum the first-named in particular show themselves quite ready to take up their abode in my reed-apparatus. All that I had to do was to replace the reeds by glass tubes, which would allow me to watch the work without disturbing the insect.
Fed upon the larva of the Three-horned Osmia or of the Blue Osmia, Anthrax sinuata, whether of handsome proportions or a dwarf, is still Anthrax sinuata; fed upon the allowance of the Anthidium of the empty Snail-shells, the Anthidium of the brambles, the Megachile or doubtless many others, the Burnt Zonitis is still the Burnt Zonitis.
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