ndifferent to her: red, white or pink, all the petals underwent
the disastrous operation. A few captures, ancient relics of my
collecting-boxes by this time, indemnified me for the pillage. I have
not seen this unpleasant Bee since. With what does she build when there
are no geranium-flowers handy? I do not know; but the fact remains that
the fragile tailoress used to attack the foreign flower, a fairly
recent acquisition from the Cape, as though all her race had never done
anything else.

These details leave us with one obvious conclusion, which is contrary to
our original ideas, based on the unvarying character of insect industry.
In constructing their jars, the Leaf-cutters, each following the taste
peculiar to her species, do not make use of this or that plant to
the exclusion of the others; they have no definite flora, no domain
faithfully transmitted by heredity. Their pieces of leaves vary
according to the surrounding vegetation; they vary in different layers
of the same cell. Everything suits them, exotic or native, rare or
common, provided that the bit cut out be easy to employ. It is not the
general aspect of the shrub, with its fragile or bushy branches, its
large or small, green or grey, dull or glossy leaves, that guides
the insect: such advanced botanical knowledge does not enter into the
question at all. In the thicket chosen as a pinking-establishment, the
Megachile sees but one thing: leaves useful for her work. The Shrike,
with his passion for plants with long, woolly sprigs, knows where
to find nicely-wadded substitutes when his favourite growth, the
cotton-rose, is lacking; the Megachile has much wider resources:
indifferent to the plant itself, she looks only into the foliage. If she
finds leaves of the proper size, of a dry texture capable of defying the
damp and of a suppleness favourable to cylindrical curving, that is
all she asks; and the rest does not matter. She has therefore an almost
unlimited field for her labour.

These sudden and wholly unprovoked changes give cause for reflection.
When my geranium-flowers were devastated, how had the obtrusive Bee,
untroubled by the profound dissimilarity between the petals, snow-white
here, bright scarlet there, how had she learnt her trade? 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 im