Part 12 (1/2)

BEING A MASON-BEE FOR A LITTLE WHILE

Now, just to show you oneabout Mrs Mason-Bee as a house-builder--how clever she is--let's try soht here Let's suppose ourselves--yourself and ot a ho by and by Say we already know that we must use this stone dust of the roadway, and that we must make our mortar not with _water_ but with _saliva_ Here's the _next_ proble up over there?

That's the way human masons do it But Mrs Mason-Bee evidently thinks otherwise, for at the very tiy, you notice she is doing herShe rolls and kneads heras she can possibly carry Then ”buz-z-z-z!” Away she goes, straight as an arrow, back home, and the mortar is spread where it is needed

You see, after all, this is the best way If she didn't turn the dust into ood-sized luether, she couldn't carry much of it at a tiet her house built As it is, the pellets she carries are of the size of s load, let er than Mrs Mason-Bee

And re from sunrise to sunset Without awalls and then back she goes to the precise spot where she has found the buildinga nest, theto and fro, day after day, travels, on the average, about 275 miles; half the distance across the widest part of France All in about five or six weeks, she does this

Then her work is over She retires to some quiet place under the stones, and dies As I said, she never sees the babies she has done so much for

[Illustration: SURFACE MOUNDS OF THE MASON-ANT

There are mason-ants as well as mason-bees This illustration shows the works thrown up by soarden path one h they are so stoutly built, the houses of the eous palaces” that Shakespere speaks of, finally go back to the dust But while one of these littlean old one left by a mother of the previous year, you would suppose the fate of the world hung on it; as indeed the fate of the world of mason-bees does

Scrape! Scrape! Scrape! With the tips of those little jaws, her mandibles, she makes the stony dust

Rake! Rake! Rake! With her front feet she gathers and er and excited she gets, horapped up in her work as she digs away in the hard-packedhorses and oxen, and the French peasants with their wooden shoes, are ale And even then she only flits aside until the danger has passed Then down she drops and at it again!

But sometimes, the boys and the teacher found, she starts to ht of that tiny little ho the pebbles

Poor little lady!

HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY

Perhaps nothing in nature is more wonderful than an insect; particularly when you consider that he _is_ only an insect! So, of course, whole libraries have been written about insects Here are a few of thewith the subject: Beard's ”Boy's Book of Bugs, butterflies and Beetles”; Co's ”Our Insect Friends and Foes”; Doubleday's ”Nature's Garden”; Du Puy's ”Trading Bugs with the Nations” This about trading bugs is an article in ”Uncle Sam: Wonder Worker,” and tells how Uncle Saet rid of injurious insects and bring in useful ones

Grant Allen's ”sextons and Scavengers” (”Nature's Work Shop”) tells s about the sexton beetles; how, by tasting bad, they keep birds and things fro them; why you will always find an even nuether; what they use for spades in their digging; why male sextons bury their wives alive, and why there is reason to believe that these weird little insects have a sense of beauty and of music

The sayptians, the insect that we know as the ”tuarded this bug as sacred; and why men and women wear imitation beetles for brooches and watch-charreatest work on this famous beetle has been written by the famous French observer Fabre, ”The Homer of the Insect” You will find this book, ”The Sacred Beetle,” in any good public library

Aives a very minute description of the variety of tools used by the beetle; tells hoo beetles roll a ball;[17] how they dig their holes; how they ”play possum,” and then (I'm almost ashamed to tell this) rob their partners! How they wipe the dust out of their eyes; about a turound burrows so ways; why there are fewer beetles in hard tiaieties; their value as weather-prophets, and how Fabre's little son Paul helped hireat book

[17] You've often noticed them, haven't you? Now read Fabre's wonderful book and see how much you _didn't_ notice

Allen's essay, ”The Day of the Canker Wors about the Cicada, the locust that only comes once in seventeen years;[18] about Lady Locust's saw (it looks like a cut-out puzzle); about the clay galleries the locusts build when they coround; how many times they have to put on new dresses before they finally look like locusts; why, at one stage of the process, they look like ghosts, and how they blow up their wings as you do a bicycle tire

[18] ”And that's once too ree with hie they do

(Fabre's book on the sacred beetle also deals, incidentally, with the Cicada)