Part 11 (2/2)

These termite skyscrapers aren't much to look at on the outside, but inside they're just fine; they have everything the most particular ant could want For instance, the terht up-to-date in their ideas about fresh air, their houses being well ventilated through s left in the walls for that purpose You can see the importance of this fresh-air system when you know there are thousands of tere syste off the water of the rains And a fine piece ofof it is, too; for these ”water-pipes” are the underground passages hollowed out in getting the clay to build the ho the seith the other, so to speak

THE THERMOSTATS FOR THE NURSERIES

The ter hotel--oh, I don't kno_and queen Next to the royal apartments are the pantries, a lot of them, and they are all stored with food In the upper part of the termitarium are the nurseries--many nurseries--for no one nursery could care for any such numbers of babies as the queen has Between the nursery and the roof is an air-space, and there are also air-spaces on the sides and beneath The nursery thus being surrounded by air, the eggs and, when they coes of temperature

It's the saerators and thers are kept are divided by walls ether This s are kept at an even teood_ thing, as you'll see by looking it up in the dictionary

While we cannot see any of the termite skyscrapers in the United States, because we have none of the species of termites that build them, we can see a member of the ters into joists of houses On the outside of these same joists, and up in the attics of old farmhouses, if there happens to be a broken -pane, or soet in, you can see the nest of another tiller of the soil, the wasp The mason-wasps or mud daubers are the most common You will find their nests on the rafters of the barn when you go to thron hay, or when you go into the corn-crib They have all sorts of fancies--these wasps--about their clay homes and where to build them Some build on the walls and some in the corners of rafters, others prefer outdoor life Some want to live alone, others like society What are known as ”social” wasps so in the ground; others fasten their nests to the boughs of trees The work of these wasps, fro the soil, but helping to supply it with humus; for their nests are made of wood fibre, which they tear with their ateposts, rail fences, and the bark of trees

[Illustration: NESTS OF MASON-WASPS]

The carpenter-wasp is both a orker and a clay-worker He cuts tubular nests in wood and divides them by partitions We think we're pretty s up ideas, but here's a creature, no bigger than the end of your finger, who has picked up an idea frorafted it on his native trade of clay-worker, and made himself as nice and cosey a country place as you'd want to see!

ABOUT THE WASP, THE FOX, AND THE bu, this spreading of good ideas aer-wasps, and the bu his own burrohen he has to, but if he finds somebody else's that he can use, he just helps himself--provided, of course, the owner isn't Brer Bear, or so fellow that Brer Fox doesn't care to have any words with In the saer-wasps ed to, but prefer to help theh they don't drive anybody else out They simply take possession of holes left by field-s a hole a foot or more deep, carpets it with leaves, and lines it ax

Leading up to the hoer there may be two or three hundred bees in one nest As the bu, the burrow has to be dug bigger and bigger, to take care of thereatest of bee workers in the soil is the et an idea of what a useful citizen the es of one species soood load for a teaone on with their work for years and years to coes in the past--and people wouldn't have thought much about it, if it hadn't been for soe in southern France, a school-teacher, as getting on in years, took his s--setting up stakes and things, you know, the way George Washi+ngton used to do It's a stony, barren land--this part of France--and the fields are covered with pebbles The teacher noticed that often when he sent a boy to plant a stake, he would stoop every once in a while, pick up a pebble and _stick a straw into it_! That's what it looked like! Then he would suck the straw

Well, tostory short,[15] these pebbles had on them the little clay cells of the mason-bee Mrs Mason-Bee fills these cells with honey, lays an egg in the honey, and when the babies co--don't you see? In other words, Mother Bee not only puts up their lunch for theht into the lunch! This makes it convenient all around; for, like almost all insect mothers, Mrs

Mason-Bee is never there after the babies come

[15] The whole story is told in the famous book, ”The Mason Bee,” by Henri Fabre He was the teacher

[Illustration: MASON-BEE CELLS AMONG THE ROCKS]

There were so many of these pebbles scattered over the plain, and the bees that were building new hoht and so fast between the pebbles and a near-by road that ”they looked like trails of smoke,” as Fabre expresses it

Now, you et dirt to build their nests when there was plenty of loose earth right at their own door-steps; right around the pebbles the that sounds stranger still Mrs Mason-Bee takes those extra trips because a roadway is soin! It's not because she needs the exercise, goodness knows--this busy Mrs

Mason-Bee--but because the hard earth of the roadway ets it dug out and worked up And here's another thing that will seeh the soil she thus works over must be dampened before she can plaster it into the walls of her ho will do her but dust, and dust that she herself scrapes from the roadway The reason of this is that the ot to knead the soil carefully and thoroughly with saliva, which acts as a kind of mortar This saliva, of course, she supplies

And the dust she works with must be as fine as powder and as dry as a bone Then it absorbs the saliva, and when it dries it is almost like stone In fact it's a kind of ces and bridges

[Illustration: _Copyright by Brown Brothers_

FABRE STUDYING THE MASON-BEE]

But this wonderful old teacher and his boys[16] found that even this isn't all this little house-builder and house-keeper has to think of

She s in the roadhere the bits of stone in this stony soil have been ground to powder and then packed hard by the wheels of the far their heavy loads But what did Mrs M B do for ground-up stone in the long ages beforewith his carts? Mr Earl Reed, who, beside being the distinguished etcher of ”The Dunes,” is a close observer of nature in general, tellsthe pulverized stone at the base of cliffs Evidently the mills of the wind and rain, that we have read of in previous chapters, had Mrs B's wants in ht to see what Fabre himself says about them in that famous book of his