ained. A cotton bag is made, with the
sheath of the reed as a mould. If this guiding sheath were lacking, the
thimble shape would be obtained all the same, with no less elegance,
as is proved by the Girdled Anthidium, who makes her nest in some
hiding-place or other in the walls or the ground. When the purse is
finished, the provisions come and the egg, followed by the closing of
the cell. We do not here find the geometrical lid of the Leaf-cutters,
the pile of disks tight-set in the mouth of the jar. The bag is closed
with a cotton sheet whose edges are soldered by a felting-process to the
edges of the opening. The soldering is so well done that the honey-pouch
and its cover form an indivisible whole. Immediately above it, the
second cell is constructed, having its own base. At the beginning of
this work, the insect takes care to join the two storeys by felting the
ceiling of the first to the floor of the second. Thus continued to the
end, the work, with its inner solderings, becomes an unbroken cylinder,
in which the beauties of the separate wallets disappear from view. In
very much the same fashion, but with less adhesion among the different
cells, do the Leaf-cutters act when stacking their jars in a column
without any external division into storeys.

Let us return to the reed-stump which gives us these details. Beyond the
cotton-wool cylinder wherein ten cocoons are lodged in a row comes
an empty space of half a decimetre or more. (About two
inches.--Translator's Note.) The Osmiae and the Leaf-cutters are also
accustomed to leave these long, deserted vestibules. The nest ends, at
the orifice of the reed, with a strong plug of flock coarser and less
white than that of the cells. This use of closing-materials which are
less delicate in texture but of greater resisting-power, while not an
invariable characteristic, occurs frequently enough to make us suspect
that the insect knows how to distinguish what is best suited now to the
snug sleeping-berth of the larvae, anon to the defensive barricade of
the home. Sometimes the choice is an exceedingly judicious one, as is
shown by the nest of the Diadem Anthidium. Time after time, whereas the
cells were composed of the finest grade of white cotton, gathered from
Centaurea solsticialis, or St. Barnaby's thistle, the barrier at the
entrance, differing from the rest of the work in its yellow colouring,
was a heap of close-set bristles supplied by the scallop-leaved mullein.
Th