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The Osmiae quarrel for the possession of these crystal palaces, hitherto unknown to their race. The reeds and the paper tubes likewise do wonderfully. The number provided is too small; and I hasten to increase it. "The Mason-bees": chapters 4 and 10. The late-comers, finding nothing else free, go and settle in the locks of my table-drawers.
In July, the result is as follows: of twenty Osmiae thus immured, six succeed in boring a round hole through the wall and making their way out; the others perish in their cells, without managing to release themselves.
The two Osmiae who are the almond-tree's early visitors are no chemists: they know nothing of the making and mixing of hydraulic mortar; they limit themselves to gathering natural soaked earth, mud in short, which they allow to dry without any special preparation on their part; and so they need deep and well-sheltered retreats, into which the rain cannot penetrate, or the work would fall to pieces.
Supposing that all the Osmiae possessed the necessary strength of jaw as well as the instinct for this sideward boring, it is clear that egress from each cell through a special window would be much more advantageous than egress through the common door.
So far then as their building-materials are concerned, the Osmiae whom I have been able to observe are divided into two classes: one building compartments with mud, the other with a green-tinted vegetable putty. The first section includes the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, both so remarkable for the horny tubercles on their faces.
The five on the left went out on the left, the five on the right went out on the right, reversing, when necessary, their original direction in the cell. It was very remarkable from the point of view of symmetry; moreover, it was a very unlikely arrangement among the total number of possible arrangements, as mathematics will show us. Let us take n to represent the number of Osmiae.
I enjoin the household henceforth not to touch a thing in the insects' laboratory, to do no more sweeping, no more dusting. They might disturb a swarm and make it think that my hospitality was not to be trusted. During four or five weeks I witness the work of a number of Osmiae which is much too large to allow my watching their individual operations.
When the time comes for nest-building, the stay-at-home insect will have, close beside the house of its birth, a choice of two habitations: the cylinder, a novelty unknown to its race; and the spiral staircase, the ancient ancestral home. The nests were finished at the end of May and the Osmiae began to answer my list of questions.
The conclusion therefore is exactly the same in the case of all three Osmiae. These conclusions, as my notes show, apply likewise, in every respect, to the various species of Mason-bees; and one clear and simple rule stands out from this collection of facts.
The Osmiae "reply by a click of the jaws to the advances of their lovers, who recoil, and then, doubtless to make themselves more valiant, they also execute a ferocious mandibular grimace. With this byplay of the jaws and their menacing gestures of the head in the empty air the lovers have the air of intending to eat one another."
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