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Updated: May 24, 2025
One winter evening, as we were sitting round the fire, whose cheerful blaze unloosed our tongues, I put the problem of the Leaf-cutter to my family: 'Among your kitchen-utensils, I said, 'you have a pot in daily use; but it has lost its lid, which was knocked over and broken by the Tomcat playing among the shelves.
She did not seem to see the sunlight which poured all over her, and lit up a wide, deep hall, floored with marble, and opening at the other end on trees and flowers, which showed the sunlight busy there too. The child lingered wistfully. Then crossed the hall, and went into a matted, breezy, elegant room, where a lady lay luxuriously on a couch, playing with a book and a leaf-cutter.
Finding close at hand the wherewithal to build her nest, the Leaf-cutter went no further afield. The lopezia suited her especially, so much so that almost the whole nest was composed of it. The rest had been gathered from the capsicum. Another recruit, whose co-operation I had in no way engineered, came spontaneously to offer me her evidence.
Those inside, which are considerably smaller, increase the thickness of the sides and fill up the gaps left by the first. The Leaf-cutter therefore is able to use her scissors according to the task before her: first, the large pieces, which help the work forward, but leave empty spaces; next, the small pieces, which fit into the defective portions.
Whereas some Bees, such as the Anthidium and the Chalicodoma, share the Osmia's talent for using the twofold exit, others, such as the Solenius and the Leaf-cutter, behave like a flock of sheep and follow the first that goes out.
Inveterate habit could not have given greater certainty, greater ease to their scissors, though this was their first experience of such a material. The Silvery Leaf-cutter lent herself to an even more conclusive test. As she readily makes her nest in the reeds of my apparatus, I was able, up to a certain point, to create a landscape for her and select its vegetation myself.
She did not seem to see the sunlight which poured all over her, and lit up a wide, deep hall, floored with marble, and opening at the other end on trees and flowers, which shewed the sunlight busy there too. The child lingered wistfully. Then crossed the hall, and went into a matted, breezy, elegant room, where a lady lay luxuriously on a couch, playing with a book and a leaf-cutter.
However, it may be well to give the veechy a hint of what we have been saying, or it may seem rude and, hark'ye, Griffin, while you are about it, rub him down a little touching books and that sort of thing; for the surgeon tells me he has heard of him in Leghorn as a regular leaf-cutter."
These reminded him at once of the master workers who are said to rule over the leaf-cutter ants; like them they seemed to be directing and co-ordinating the general movements. They tilted their bodies back in a manner altogether singular as if they made some use of the fore feet.
I think all classes of beetles had suffered. Many fine lamellicorns, that were generally numerous, were not seen at all; neither were many species of longicorns, usually common. Butterflies were also scarce, but it was the second season that they had been so. Some ants were affected; in others, such as the leaf-cutter, I noted no perceptible diminution in number.
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