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I have spoken of the first in another volume; I have mentioned its pseudochrysalis found in the cells of two Osmiæ, namely, the Three-pronged Osmia, which piles its cells in a dry bramble-stem, and the Three-horned Osmia and also Latreille's Osmia, both of which exploit the nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds.
While exploiting, in friendly rivalry with the Three-horned Osmia, the galleries which the Mason-bee of the Sheds good-naturedly surrenders to both, Latreille's Osmia uses different materials for her partitions and her doors.
Less frequently, the same nests serve for Latreille's Osmia. Let us first describe the Masked Anthophora's nests. In a steep bank of sandy clay, we find a set of round, wide-open holes. There are generally only a few of them, each about half an inch in diameter. They are the entrance-doors leading to the Anthophora's abode, doors always left open, even after the building is finished.
So far then as their building-materials are concerned, the Osmiae whom I have been able to observe are divided into two classes: one building compartments with mud, the other with a green-tinted vegetable putty. To the latter belongs Latreille's Osmia. The first section includes the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, both so remarkable for the horny tubercles on their faces.
My preference lent towards the Three-horned Osmia, who is very plentiful in my neighbourhood, where, together with Latreille's Osmia, she frequents in particular the monstrous nests of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. I therefore thought out a scheme for making the Three-horned Osmia accept my study as her settlement and build her nest in glass tubes, through which I could easily watch the progress.
Bees lay their eggs in series of first females and then males, when the two sexes are of different sizes and demand an unequal quantity of nourishment. When the two sexes are alike in size, as in the case of Latreille's Osmia, the same sequence may occur, but less regularly. This dual arrangement disappears when the place chosen for the nest is not large enough to contain the entire laying.
Being next to the door, these impatient ones will leave the home without upsetting the shells that are slower in hatching. I experimented on Latreille's Osmia, using short and even very short stumps of reed. All that I had to do was to lay them just beside the nests of the Mason-bee of the Sheds, nests beloved by this particular Osmia.
With my pan-pipe apparatus displayed on the walls of my enclosure and with old hurdle-reeds left lying flat out of doors, I obtained the Horned Osmia in fair quantities. I persuaded Latreille's Osmia to build her nest in reeds, which she did with a zeal which I was far from expecting.
This stratagem had answered perfectly with the Three-horned Osmia and Latreille's Osmia, whose little housekeeping-secrets I had learnt thanks to the transparent dwelling-house. Why should it not answer for its Cotton-bees and, in the same way, with the Leaf-cutters? I almost counted on success. Events betrayed my confidence.
We may then reject Latreille's supposition, that the gossamer owes its origin indifferently to the young of several genera of spiders: although, as we have seen, the young of other spiders do possess the power of performing aerial voyages. During our different passages south of the Plata, I often towed astern a net made of bunting, and thus caught many curious animals.
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