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The cylinder and the hole in the wall stand for progress; the spiral of the Snail-shell and the ball-shaped nest represent the starting-point. I have, I think, sufficiently illustrated the inference which is borne out by the whole mass of analogous facts.
On and on went the hereditary liking; and the Snail-shell proved more and more agreeable to the insect's descendants, who began to look for it under the stones, so that later generations, with the aid of habit, ended by adopting it as the ancestral dwelling. Again by accident, the Bee happened upon a drop of resin.
"If I do not know what I am taking up, I know very well what I am laying down; and it does not signify a straw what comes after if it was a snail-shell, that would cover my head!" "Hum " said the old doctor, "the snail is very well in his way, but I have no idea that he was ever cut out for a farmer." "Do you think you will find it a business you would like, Mr. Rossitur?" said his wife timidly.
Before I had recovered from my surprise he had eaten another and another, and he was busy over the sixth when an ejaculation I uttered made him turn and see me. He stared at me, pin in one hand, snail-shell in the other, for a moment in mute astonishment; then, turning more away from me, he went on with his repast, and began insultingly to throw the shells at me over his head.
The king sent for Tom in great haste, but being fully aware of the danger of royal anger, he crept into an empty snail-shell, where he lay for a long time until he was almost starved with hunger; but at last he ventured to peep out, and seeing a fine large butterfly on the ground, near the place of his concealment, he got close to it and jumping astride on it, was carried up into the air.
The second Resin-bee that inhabits shells, Anthidium bellicosum, hatches in July and works during the fierce heat of August. Her architecture differs in no wise from that of her kinswoman of the springtime, so much so that, when we find a tenanted Snail-shell in a hole in the wall or under the stones, it is impossible to decide to which of the two species the nest belongs.
I have still some thirty laggards, who continue very busy, though their work is in vain. I see some very conscientiously stopping up the entrance to a tube or a Snail-shell in which they have laid nothing at all. Others are closing the home after only building a few partitions, or even mere attempts at partitions.
The Osmia's shells can be recognized at once, as being closed at the orifice with a clay cover. The Anthidium's call for a special examination, without which we should run a great risk of filling our pockets with cumbersome rubbish. We find a dead Snail-shell among the stones. Is it inhabited by the Resin-bee or not? The outside tells us nothing.
Or did the Osmia, finding the cut reed that answered her requirements, instal herself there straightway, scorning her ancient dwelling, the Snail-shell? These questions called for a reply; and they have received one. Let us describe how things happened. Near Serignan are some great quarries of coarse limestone, characteristic of the miocene formation of the Rhone valley.
One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase of an empty snail-shell; another, attacking the pith of a dry bit of bramble, obtains for her grubs a cylindrical lodging and divides it into floors by means of partition-walls; a third employs the natural channel of a cut reed; a fourth is a rent-free tenant of the vacant galleries of some Mason-bee.
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