The Mason-Bees | Page 4

work of translation and in the

less interesting and more tedious department of research.
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS.
Chelsea, 1914.

CONTENTS.
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.


CHAPTER 1.
THE MASON-BEES.


CHAPTER 2.
EXPERIMENTS.


CHAPTER 3.
EXCHANGING THE NESTS.


CHAPTER 4.
MORE ENQUIRIES INTO MASON-BEES.


CHAPTER 5.
THE STORY OF MY CATS.


CHAPTER 6.
THE RED ANTS.

CHAPTER 7.
SOME REFLECTIONS UPON INSECT PSYCHOLOGY.


CHAPTER 8.
PARASITES.


CHAPTER 9.
THE THEORY OF PARASITISM.


CHAPTER 10.
THE TRIBULATIONS OF THE MASON-BEE.


CHAPTER 11.
THE LEUCOPSES.
INDEX.


CHAPTER 1.
THE MASON-BEES.
Reaumur (Rene Antoine Ferchault de Reaumur (1683-1757), inventor
of the Reaumur thermometer and author of "Memoires pour servir a
l'histoire naturelle des insectes."--Translator's Note.) devoted one of his
papers to the story of the Chalicodoma of the Walls, whom he calls the

Mason-bee. I propose to go on with the story, to complete it and
especially to consider it from a point of view wholly neglected by that
eminent observer. And, first of all, I am tempted to tell how I made this
Bee's acquaintance.
It was when I first began to teach, about 1843. I had left the normal
school at Vaucluse some months before, with my diploma and all the
simple enthusiasm of my eighteen years, and had been sent to
Carpentras, there to manage the primary school attached to the college.
It was a strange school, upon my word, notwithstanding its pompous
title of 'upper'; a sort of huge cellar oozing with the perpetual damp
engendered by a well backing on it in the street outside. For light there
was the open door, when the weather permitted, and a narrow
prison-window, with iron bars and lozenge panes set in lead. By way of
benches there was a plank fastened to the wall all round the room,
while in the middle was a chair bereft of its straw, a black-board and a
stick of chalk.
Morning and evening, at the sound of the bell, there came rushing in
some fifty young imps who, having shown themselves hopeless dunces
with their Cornelius Nepos, had been relegated, in the phrase of the day,
to 'a few good years of French.' Those who had found mensa too much
for them came to me to get a smattering of grammar. Children and
strapping lads were there, mixed up together, at very different
educational stages, but all incorrigibly agreed to play tricks upon the
master, the boy master who was no older than some of them, or even
younger.
To the little ones I gave their first lessons in reading; the intermediate
ones I showed how they should hold their pen to write a few lines of
dictation on their knees; to the big ones I revealed the secrets of
fractions and even the mysteries of Euclid. And to keep this restless
crowd in order, to give each mind work in accordance with its strength,
to keep attention aroused and lastly to expel dullness from the gloomy
room, whose walls dripped melancholy even more than dampness, my
one resource was my tongue, my one weapon my stick of chalk.
For that matter, there was the same contempt in the other classes for all
that was not Latin or Greek. One instance will be enough to show how
things then stood with the teaching of physics, the science which
occupies so large a place to-day. The principal of the college was a

first-rate man, the worthy Abbe X., who, not caring to dispense beans
and bacon himself, had left the commissariat-department to a relative
and had undertaken to teach the boys physics.
Let us attend one of his lessons. The subject is the barometer. The
establishment happens to possess one, an old apparatus, covered with
dust, hanging on the wall beyond the reach of profane hands and
bearing on its face, in large letters, the words stormy, rain, fair.
'The barometer,' says the good abbe, addressing his pupils, whom, in
patriarchal fashion, he calls by their Christian names, 'the barometer
tells us if the weather will be good or bad. You see the words written
on the face--stormy, rain--do you see, Bastien?'
'Yes, I see,' says Bastien, the most mischievous of the lot.
He has been looking through his book and knows more about the
barometer than his teacher does.
'It consists,' the abbe continues, 'of a bent glass tube filled with mercury,
which rises and falls according to the weather. The shorter leg of this
tube is open; the other...the other...well, we'll see. Here, Bastien, you're
the tallest, get up on the chair and just feel with your finger if the long
leg is open or closed. I can't remember for certain.'
Bastien climbs on the chair, stands as