stay for a while, come out, go in again and then fly away
briskly into the garden. They return, first one, then another. They halt
outside, in the sun, on the shutters fastened back against the wall;
they hover in the window-recess, come inside, go to the reeds and give a
glance at them, only to set off again and to return soon after. Thus
do they learn to know their home, thus do they fix their birthplace in
their memory. The village of our childhood is always a cherished spot,
never to be effaced from our recollection. The Osmia's life endures
for a month; and she acquires a lasting remembrance of her hamlet in
a couple of days. 'Twas there that she was born; 'twas there that she
loved; 'tis there that she will return. Dulces reminiscitur Argos. ('Now
falling by another's wound, his eyes He casts to heaven, on Argos thinks
and dies.'--"Aeneid," Book 10 Dryden's translation.)

At last each has made her choice. The work of construction begins; and
my expectations are fulfilled far beyond my wishes. The Osmiae build
nests in all the retreats which I have placed at their disposal. The
glass tubes, which I cover with a sheet of paper to produce the shade
and mystery favourable to concentrated toil, do wonderfully well. All,
from first to last, are occupied. 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. Snail-shells are recognized as
excellent abodes, though deprived of the shelter of the stone-heap; old
Chalicodoma-nests, down to those of the Chalicodoma of the Shrubs (Cf.
"The Mason-bees": chapters 4 and 10.--Translator's Note.), whose cells
are so small, are eagerly occupied. The late-comers, finding nothing
else free, go and settle in the locks of my table-drawers. There are
daring ones who make their way into half-open boxes containing ends of
glass tubes in which I have stored my most recent acquisitions: grubs,
pupae and cocoons of all kinds, whose evolution I wished to study.
Whenever these receptacles have an atom of free space, they claim the
right to build there, whereas I formally oppose the claim. I hardly
reckoned on such a success, which obliges me to put some order into
the invasion with which I am threatened. I seal up the locks, I shut my
boxes, I close my various receptacles for old nests, in short I remove
from the building-yard any retrea