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The first, Anthrax sinuata, FALLEN, lives in the cocoons of Osmia tricornis, who herself builds her nest in the old galleries of the hairy-footed Anthophora; the second, Anthrax trifasciata, MEIGEN, exploits the Chalicodoma of the Sheds. I will consult both. Once more, here am I, somewhat late in life, at Carpentras, whose rude Gallic name sets the fool smiling and the scholar thinking.
This massive fortification, which is less finished than the rest of the work but more expensive in materials, represents perhaps in itself one half of the complete task, so that, to establish her dome, Chalicodoma muraria, coming and going across the arid table-land, traverses altogether a distance of 275 miles, which is nearly half of the greatest dimension of France from north to south.
I shall call it the Chalicodoma, or Mason-bee, of the Sheds. There is no objection to the use of this name in a book where the reader prefers lucidity to the tyranny of systematic entomology. The second species, that which builds its nests on the branches, is Chalicodoma rufescens, J. PEREZ. For a like reason, I shall call it the Chalicodoma of the Shrubs.
A Chalicodoma grub gives the dwarf the wherewithal to portion a score of her little ones, who will live in common and in all comfort on what a single son of the giantess would eat up by himself. The tiny boring engineer, therefore, always settles a numerous family at the same banquet. The bowl, ample for a dozen or two, is emptied in perfect harmony.
The Chalicodoma, whose name of Mason Bee indicates the industry it exercises, is a hymenopterous relative to our Bees, long since carefully studied by Réaumur. It does not live in societies like the latter, and exhibits individual initiative and skill as great as the swallows. The females accomplish the work which I am about to describe.
Why am I the descendant, so they tell me, of some tertiary Baboon afflicted with the passion for knowledge from which Bull, my friend and companion, is exempt? Why...oh, where have I got to? I was going in, wasn't I, with a splitting headache? Quick, let us get back to our subject! It was in the first week of July that I saw the inoculation begin on my Chalicodoma sicula nests.
It comprised eight cells, of which seven were occupied by the Chalicodoma, and the eighth by a little Chalcis, the plague of a whole host of the Bee-tribe. Apart from this instance, which was not a very serious case, I have seen nothing.
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