The Wonders of Instinct | Page 6

to me by offering the Bees and
Wasps a spoil to forage, I am compelled to reinstate them in the ground

whence they were driven by the fork.
What abounds without my mediation is the invaders of any soil that is
first dug up and then left for a time to its own resources. We have, in
the first rank, the couch-grass, that execrable weed which three years of
stubborn warfare have not succeeded in exterminating. Next, in respect
of number, come the centauries, grim-looking one and all, bristling
with prickles or starry halberds. They are the yellow-flowered centaury,
the mountain centaury, the star-thistle and the rough centaury: the first
predominates. Here and there, amid their inextricable confusion, stands,
like a chandelier with spreading orange flowers for lights, the fierce
Spanish oyster-plant, whose spikes are strong as nails. Above it towers
the Illyrian cotton-thistle, whose straight and solitary stalk soars to a
height of three to six feet and ends in large pink tufts. Its armour hardly
yields before that of the oyster-plant. Nor must we forget the lesser
thistle-tribe, with, first of all, the prickly or "cruel" thistle, which is so
well armed that the plant-collector knows not where to grasp it; next,
the spear-thistle, with its ample foliage, ending each of its veins with a
spear-head; lastly, the black knap-weed, which gathers itself into a
spiky knot. In among these, in long lines armed with hooks, the shoots
of the blue dewberry creep along the ground. To visit the prickly
thicket when the Wasp goes foraging, you must wear boots that come
to mid-leg or else resign yourself to a smarting in the calves. As long as
the ground retains a few remnants of the vernal rains, this rude
vegetation does not lack a certain charm, when the pyramids of the
oyster-plant and the slender branches of the cotton-thistle rise above the
wide carpet formed by the yellow-flowered centaury's saffron heads;
but let the droughts of summer come and we see but a desolate waste,
which the flame of a match would set ablaze from one end to the other.
Such is, or rather was, when I took possession of it, the Eden of bliss
where I mean to live henceforth alone with the insect. Forty years of
desperate struggle have won it for me.
Eden, I said; and, from the point of view that interests me, the
expression is not out of place. This cursed ground, which no one would
have had at a gift to sow with a pinch of turnip-seed, is an earthly
paradise for the Bees and the Wasps. Its mighty growth of thistles and

centauries draws them all to me from everywhere around. Never, in my
insect-hunting memories, have I seen so large a population at a single
spot; all the trades have made it their rallying-point. Here come hunters
of every kind of game, builders in clay, weavers of cotton goods,
collectors of pieces cut from a leaf or the petals of a flower, architects
in paste-board, plasterers mixing mortar, carpenters boring wood,
miners digging underground galleries, workers handling goldbeater's
skin and many more.
Who is this one? An Anthidium. (A Cotton-bee.--Translator's Note.)
She scrapes the cobwebby stalk of the yellow-flowered centaury and
gathers a ball of wadding which she carries off proudly in the tips of
her mandibles. She will turn it, under ground, into cotton-felt satchels
to hold the store of honey and the egg. And these others, so eager for
plunder? They are Megachiles (Leaf-cutting Bees.--Translator's Note.),
carrying under their bellies their black, white, or blood-red
reaping-brushes. They will leave the thistles to visit the neighbouring
shrubs and there cut from the leaves oval pieces which will be made
into a fit receptacle to contain the harvest. And these, clad in black
velvet? They are Chalicodomae (Mason-bees.--Translator's Note.), who
work with cement and gravel. We could easily find their masonry on
the stones in the harmas. And these, noisily buzzing with a sudden
flight? They are the Anthophorae (a species of Wild Bees.--Translator's
Note.), who live in the old walls and the sunny banks of the
neighbourhood.
Now come the Osmiae. One stacks her cells in the spiral staircase of an
empty snail-shell; another, attacking the pith of a dry bit of bramble,
obtains for her grubs a cylindrical lodging and divides it into floors by
means of partition-walls; a third employs the natural channel of a cut
reed; a fourth is a rent-free tenant of the vacant galleries of some
Mason-bee. Here are the Macrocerae and the Eucerae, whose males are
proudly horned; the Dasypodae, who carry an ample brush of bristles
on their hind-legs for a reaping implement; the Andrenae, so manyfold
in species; the slender-bellied Halicti. (Osmiae, Macrocerae, Eucerae,
Dasypodae, Andrenae, and Halicti are all different species of