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Updated: May 29, 2025
When with her joiner's wimble she has patiently bored the beam to a depth of nine inches, would she be able to cut out and place in position the thousand and one pieces which the Silky Leaf-cutter employs for her nest? Time would fail her, even as it would fail a Megachile who, lacking the Capricorn's chamber, had herself to dig a home in the trunk of the oak.
I remembered finding, at rare intervals, nests of both the Anthidium and the Megachile in the hollows of cut reeds. I thereupon installed some hives of a new kind on the sunniest walls of my enclosure.
Nothing tells us that she herself was not for the first time exploiting the plant from the Cape; and, if she really did have predecessors, the habit had not had time to become inveterate, considering the modern importation of the geranium. Where again did the Silvery Megachile, for whom I created an exotic shrubbery, make the acquaintance of the lopezia, which comes from Mexico?
Similarly those which have reason to fear for their offspring, if not for themselves, do nothing to evade the enemy which watches for them; the Megachile, although it could easily destroy it, is indifferent to the presence of a miserable midge, "the bandit who is always there, meditating its crime"; the Bembex, confronted with the Tachinarius, cannot control its terror, but nevertheless resigns itself, while squeaking with fright.
One could get an excellent piece, without further labour, by merely cutting the leaf-stalk of the box, as Megachile sericans does with her paliurus. The lilac-lover disdains them absolutely. For what reason? I fancy that she finds them too stiff. Would she think differently if the lilac-bush were not there? Perhaps so.
Ask of the Halictus, which, no longer capable of becoming a mother, makes herself guardian of a city, in order still to labour within the measure of her means. Ask of the Osmia, the Megachile, the Anthidium, which "with no maternal aim, for the sole joy of labour, strive to expend their forces in the accomplishment of their vain tasks, until the forces of life fail."
A less mysterious question than this geometrical problem is that of the materials. Does each species of Megachile keep to a single plant, or has it a definite botanical domain wherein to exercise its liberty of choice?
What model has the Megachile when cutting her neat ellipses out of the delicate material for her wallets, the robinia-leaves? What mental pattern guides her scissors? What system of measurement tells her the dimensions?
One of them provides me with seventeen cells, the highest number appearing in my census of the Megachile clan. Most of them are lodged in the nymphal chamber of the Capricorn; and, as the spacious recess is too wide for a single row, the cells are arranged in three parallel series. The remainder, in a single string, occupy the vestibule, which is completed and filled up by the terminal barricade.
The leaf-stalk is clipped with the scissors and, without more ado, the Megachile retires the richer by a first-rate bit of material. Split up into their component parts, two cells give me altogether eighty-three pieces of leaves, whereof eighteen are smaller than the others and of a round shape. The last-named come from the lids.
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