Matters may take a yet more serious turn, so [[314]]obstinate and imperious is the desire to harvest the store securely. The unfinished cell that the bee refuses to accept instead of her own complete one, with its honey, is sometimes, as I have said, among several containing paste and egg, and newly closed. In this case I have seen, though not always, the following sight. Having ascertained unmistakably that the unfinished cell will not do, the bee begins to gnaw the cover of a neighbouring one. With her saliva she softens a spot in the mortar, and patiently digs away atom by atom in the hard covering. A long half hour passes before the tiny dimple excavated is big enough to receive a pin’s head. I waited. Then I got out of patience, and, feeling sure that she wanted to open the storehouse, I decided to help her and shorten the labour. With the point of my knife I knocked off the top; but the crown of the cell came off too, and its edge was a good deal broken. In my clumsiness I had made a graceful vase into a wretched, shattered pot. I was right; the bee wanted to break open the door, and without troubling herself as to the fragmentary state of the orifice, she immediately established herself in the cell opened to her. Many times did she bring honey and pollen, though the store was already complete. Finally, in this cell containing an egg not hers she laid her own egg, and then closed, as best she could, the shattered mouth. Thus this bee, who was engaged in bringing food, neither could nor would be baffled by the impossibility brought about by me of continuing her work unless she completed the cell which replaced hers. What she was doing she persisted in doing in spite of obstacles. She accomplished her task thoroughly, but in the [[315]]most absurd way,—by breaking into another bee’s cell, continuing to store in a cell already overflowing, placing an egg where the real owner had already laid one, and finally, closing an orifice which needed serious repairs. Could one desire a better proof of the irresistible impulse obeyed by the insect?
Finally, there are other rapid and consecutive actions so closely connected that the execution of the second implies necessarily the repetition of the first, even when this has become useless. I have already said how Sphex flavipennis persists in going down into her burrow alone, having brought near it the cricket which I cruelly removed immediately. Her repeated discomfitures did not make her give up the preliminary domiciliary visit, useless as it is when repeated ten or twenty times. Chalicodoma muraria exhibits under another form a like repetition of an act useless itself, but a necessary prelude to the next one. Arrived with her booty, she goes through a double act of storage. First she plunges head first into the cell to disgorge the contents of her crop; then she comes out, returning at once backward to brush off her load of pollen. At the moment when she is about to enter, tail first, I gently put her aside with a straw, thus hindering her second action. She begins all over again, going head first into the cell, although her crop is empty. Then comes the turn of going in backward. I instantly put her aside again, and again she goes in head first. Once more I use my straw. And this goes on as long as the observer pleases. Put aside just as she is about to introduce her hinder parts into the cell, she returns to the orifice and persists in [[316]]descending head first. Sometimes she goes quite down—sometimes only half-way, or perhaps there is a mere pretence at descending, and she only stoops her head in the opening, but at any rate this quite useless action—for the honey is already disgorged—invariably precedes the entrance backward to deposit pollen. It is almost the movement of a machine, not a wheel of which moves till the main one begins to turn. [[317]]
DESCRIPTIVE NOTES
The following Hymenoptera appear new to me in the French fauna. I append their description:—
Cerceris antoniæ, H. Fab.
Length—16–18 millimetres. Black, closely and strongly punctured; clypeus raised like a nose, i.e. forming a convex projection, large at the base, pointed at the end—like half a cone cut down its length; crest between the antennæ projecting; a line above crest, cheeks, and a large dot behind each eye, yellow; hood—yellow with black point; mandibles, rusty yellow; tips, black. The 4th and 5th joints of antennæ, rusty yellow, the rest brown. Two dots on prothorax, wing scales and postscutellum, yellow; first segment of abdomen with two dot-like spots; four next on posterior edge having a yellow band sharply hollowed in triangle form, or even broken, and this the more as the segment is a less distant one.
Under part of the body, black; feet entirely of rusty yellow colour; wings slightly bronzed at tip. Female. Male unknown to me.
In colouring this species approaches Cerceris labiata, from which, however, it differs remarkably in the form of the clypeus and the much larger size of the insect. Observed round Avignon in July. I dedicate this species to my daughter Antonia, whose help has often been valuable to me in my entomological researches.
Cerceris julii, H. Fab.