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...

As the nests of the Mason-bee of the Walls are erected on small-sized pebbles, which can be easily carried wherever you like and moved about from one place to another, without d...

a long way from its nest, marking it and then leaving it to its own resources. In case any one should wish to try the experiment for himself, I make him a present of my manner o...

Let us continue our series of tests with the Mason-bee of the Walls. Thanks to its position on a pebble which we can move at will, the nest of this Bee lends itself to most inte...

This chapter was to have taken the form of a letter addressed to Charles Darwin, the illustrious naturalist who now lies buried beside Newton in Westminster Abbey. It was my tas...

If this swinging-process fails entirely when its object is to make the insect lose its bearings, what influence can it have upon the Cat? Is the method of whirling the animal ro...

The Pigeon transported for hundreds of miles is able to find his way back to his Dove-cot; the Swallow, returning from his winter quarters in Africa, crosses the sea and once mo...

The laudator temperis acti is out of favour just now: the world is on the move. Yes, but sometimes it moves backwards. When I was a boy, our twopenny textbooks told us that man...

In August or September, let us go into some gorge with bare and sun-scorched sides. When we find a slope well-baked by the summer heat, a quiet corner with the temperature of an...

The Melecta does what she can with the gifts at her disposal. I should leave it at that, if I had not to take into consideration a grave charge brought against her. She is accus...

To illustrate the methods of those who batten on others' goods, the plunderers who know no rest till they have wrought the destruction of the worker, it would be difficult to fi...

the trowel. Hence it is absolutely necessary for her to see to her egg before the Mason-bee of the Sheds has disposed of hers and no less necessary to conceal it from the Mason'...

Let us visit the nests of Chalicodoma muraria in July, detaching them from their pebbles with a sideward blow, as I explained when telling the story of the Anthrax. The Mason-be...