The Mason-Bees | Page 6

work on insects for sale. It was called
"Histoire naturelle des animaux articules", by de Castelnau (Francis
Comte de Castelnau de la Porte (1812-1880), the naturalist and
traveller. Castelnau was born in London and died at Melbourne.--
Translator's Note.), E. Blanchard (Emile Blanchard (born 1820), author
of various works on insects, Spiders, etc.--Translator's Note.) and
Lucas (Pierre Hippolyte Lucas (born 1815), author of works on Moths
and Butterflies, Crustaceans, etc.--Translator's Note.), and boasted a
multitude of most attractive illustrations; but the price of it, the price of
it! No matter: was not my splendid income supposed to cover
everything, food for the mind as well as food for the body? Anything
extra that I gave to the one I could save upon the other; a method of
balancing painfully familiar to those who look to science for their
livelihood. The purchase was effected. That day my professional
emoluments were severely strained: I devoted a month's salary to the
acquisition of the book. I had to resort to miracles of economy for some
time to come before making up the enormous deficit.
The book was devoured; there is no other word for it. In it, I learnt the
name of my black Bee; I read for the first time various details of the
habits of insects; I found, surrounded in my eyes with a sort of halo, the

revered names of Reaumur, Huber (Francois Huber (1750-1831), the
Swiss naturalist, author of "Nouvelles observations sur les abeilles." He
early became blind from excessive study and conducted his scientific
work thereafter with the aid of his wife.--Translator's Note.) and Leon
Dufour (Jean Marie Leon Dufour (1780-1865), an army surgeon who
served with distinction in several campaigns, and subsequently
practised as a doctor in the Landes, where he attained great eminence as
a naturalist. Fabre often refers to him as the Wizard of the Landes. Cf.
"The Life of the Spider", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander
Teixeira de Mattos: chapter 1; and "The Life of the Fly": chapter
1.--Translator's Note.); and, while I turned over the pages for the
hundredth time, a voice within me seemed to whisper:
'You also shall be of their company!'
Ah, fond illusions, what has come of you? (The present essay is one of
the earliest in the "Souvenirs Entomologiques."--Translator's Note.)
But let us banish these recollections, at once sweet and sad, and speak
of the doings of our black Bee. Chalicodoma, meaning a house of
pebbles, concrete or mortar, would be a most satisfactory title, were it
not that it has an odd sound to any one unfamiliar with Greek. The
name is given to Bees who build their cells with materials similar to
those which we employ for our own dwellings. The work of these
insects is masonry; only it is turned out by a rustic mason more used to
hard clay than to hewn stone. Reaumur, who knew nothing of scientific
classification--a fact which makes many of his papers very difficult to
understand--named the worker after her work and called our builders in
dried clay Mason-bees, which describes them exactly.
We have two of them in our district: the Chalicodoma of the Walls
(Chalicodoma muraria), whose history Reaumur gives us in a masterly
fashion; and the Sicilian Chalicodoma (C. sicula) (For reasons that will
become apparent after the reader has learnt their habits, the author also
speaks of the Mason-bee of the Walls and the Sicilian Mason-bee as the
Mason-bee of the Pebbles and the Mason-bee of the Sheds respectively.
Cf.

Chapter 4
footnote.--Translator's Note.), who is not peculiar to the land of Etna,

as her name might suggest, but is also found in Greece, in Algeria and
in the south of France, particularly in the department of Vaucluse,
where she is one of the commonest Bees to be seen in the month of
May. In the first species the two sexes are so unlike in colouring that a
novice, surprised at observing them come out of the same nest, would
at first take them for strangers to each other. The female is of a splendid
velvety black, with dark-violet wings. In the male, the black velvet is
replaced by a rather bright brick-red fleece. The second species, which
is much smaller, does not show this contrast of colour: the two sexes
wear the same costume, a general mixture of brown, red and grey,
while the tips of the wings, washed with violet on a bronzed ground,
recall, but only faintly, the rich purple of the first species. Both begin
their labours at the same period, in the early part of May.
As Reaumur tells us, the Chalicodoma of the Walls in the northern
provinces selects a wall directly facing the sun and one not covered
with plaster, which might come off and imperil the