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Updated: May 8, 2025
We did not cease from our work until it was quite dark, when we retired to our encampment, quite sufficiently tired to make us sleep without the aid of any lullaby. A poor water supply. Seeds planted. Beautiful country. Ride westward. A chopped log. Magnetic hill. Singular scenery. Snail-shells. Cheering prospect westward. A new chain of hills. A nearer mountain. Vistas of green.
This result throws so much light on one of the darkest corners of biology that I must attempt to corroborate it by means of even more conclusive experiments. I propose next year to give the Osmiae nothing but Snail-shells for a lodging, picked out one by one, and rigorously to deprive the swarm of any other retreat in which the laying could be effected.
Thousands and thousands of experiments have been made throughout the ages with Snail-shells of average dimensions: the thing is certain, because I find many of them to-day. Well, have these life-saving experiments, with their immense importance to the race, become general by hereditary bequest?
Here, hung up or embedded, are the dry carcasses of Opatra, Asidae and other Tenebrionidae that favour underrock shelters; segments of Iuli, bleached by the sun; shells of Pupae, common among the stones; and, lastly, Snail-shells, selected from among the smallest. These relics are obviously, for the most part, table-leavings, broken victuals.
The whole family of one mother would thus be lodged in Snail-shells which were duly marked with the date of the laying and a description of the worker. The faithful adherents of the Snail-shell were in the minority. The greater number left the tubes to come to the shells and then went back from the shells to the tubes.
The stone-heaps in the Roman quarries near Serignan, which I have so often visited in search of the nests of the Osmia who takes up her abode in Snail-shells, supply me also with the two Resin-bees installed in similar quarters.
The contents fill me with joy: they fulfil my anticipations to the letter. The great, the very great majority of the cocoons turn out to be males; here and there, in the bigger cells, a few rare females appear. The smallness of the space has almost done away with the sixty-eight Snail-shells colonized.
"Oh!" cried Terry, "to think they can sing so sweetly and behave so cruelly!" "I suppose it's only their way," said Turly. "I think birds have to be cruel, or they couldn't live. See them picking up the worms, and smashing the snail-shells against the stones!" "And men are cruel too," said Terry. "They kill the lambs " Here their talk was interrupted by an unusual and startling sight.
They are the following: Anthidium septemdentatum, LATR., A. bellicosum, LEP., A. quadrilobum, LEP., and A. Latreillii, LEP. The first two make their nests in deserted Snail-shells; the other two shelter their groups of cells sometimes in the ground, sometimes under a large stone. We will first discuss the inhabitants of the Snail-shell.
Every door-sill is a cabinet of curiosities where the collector gathers smooth pebbles, variegated shells, empty snail-shells, parrot's feathers, bones that have come to look like sticks of ivory. The odds and ends mislaid by man find a home in the bird's museum, where we see pipe-stems, metal buttons, strips of cotton stuff and stone axe-heads.
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