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It seems strange to find the familiar names of Stephenson and Bidder, Peto and Brassey, connected with first-stone layings, and health-drinkings, &c., in remote Norway; but this is one among many proofs of the ubiquity of English capital and enterprise. The government of Norway has conceded the line to an English company, by whom it will be finished in 1854.
Here we staid and drank three or four pints of wine and so parted. I home to look after my workmen, and at night to bed. The Commissioners are very busy disbanding of the army, which they say do cause great robbing. My layings out upon my house an furniture are so great that I fear I shall not be able to go through them without breaking one of my bags of L100, I having but L200 yet in the world.
On the other hand, layings of between eight and ten are not uncommon. Lastly, taking all my records together, the result is that the family of the Osmia fluctuates round about fifteen in number. I have already spoken of the great differences in size apparent in the cells of one and the same series.
Now, how are the sexes distributed in those layings which are necessarily broken up between one old nest and another? They are distributed in such a way as utterly to upset the idea of an invariable succession first of females and then of males, the idea which occurs to us on examining the new nests.
Whether they proceed from a single individual returning several times, by inadvertence, to the same place, or are the work of different individuals unaware of the previous borings, those multiple layings are very frequent, almost as much so as the normal layings. The largest which I have noticed consisted of five eggs, but we have no authority for looking upon this number as an outside limit.
All that I can say on consulting the whole of my notes, which contain a good many instances of complete layings most of them, unfortunately, spoilt through gaps caused by parasites, the death of the larva, the failure of the egg to hatch and other accidents all that I can say in general is that the complete series begins with females and nearly always ends with males.
Among these appliances, tubes, either of glass or reed, predominated. There were tubes of all lengths and widths. In the long tubes, entire or almost entire layings, with a series of females followed by a series of males, were deposited. As I have already referred to this result, I will not discuss it again.
Thence home again by water with Sir W. Rider, and so to my office, and there I sat late making up my month's accounts, and, blessed be God, do find myself L760 creditor, notwithstanding that for clothes for myself and wife, and layings out on her closett, I have spent this month L47.
We can go further, and admit that the mother alters the order of succession of the sexes at her pleasure, because her layings, between one old nest and another, are broken up into small groups of males and females according to the exigencies of space in the actual nest which she happens to be occupying.
Much may be said in answer to these invidious reflections; and I can positively affirm the first to be a falsehood: for, on the contrary, nothing is more certain than that it requires greater layings out to be free of the critic's company than of any other you can name.
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