EXPERIMENTS

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 disturbing either the work of the

builder or the repose of the occupants of the cells, they lend

themselves readily to practical experiment, the only method that can

throw a little light on the nature of instinct. To study the insect's

mental fac lties to any purpose, it is not enough for the observer to

be able to profit by some happy combination of circumstances: he must

know how to produce other combinations, vary them as much as possible

and test them by substitution and interchange. Lastly, to provide

science with a solid basis of facts, he must experiment. In this way,

the evidence of formal records will one day dispel the fantastic

legends with which our books are crowded: the Sacred Beetle (A Dung-

beetle who rolls the manure of cattle into balls for his own

consumption and that of his young. Cf. "Insect Life", by J.H. Fabre,

translated by the author of "Mademoiselle Mori": chapters 1 and 2; and

"The Life and Love of the Insect", by J. Henri Fabre, translated by

Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 1 to 4.--Translator's Note.)

calling on his comrades to lend a helping hand in dragging his pellet

out of a rut; the Sphex (A species of Hunting Wasp. Cf. "Insect Life":

chapters 6 to 12.--Translator's Note.) cutting up her Fly so as to be

able to carry him despite the obstacle of the wind; and all the other

fallacies which are the stock-in-trade of those who wish to see in the

animal world what is not really there. In this way, again, materials

will be prepared which will one day be worked up by the hand of a

master and consign hasty and unfounded theories to oblivion.



Reaumur, as a rule, confines himself to stating facts as he sees them

in the normal course of events and does not try to probe deeper into

the insect's ingenuity by means of artificially produced conditions.

In his time, everything had yet to be done; and the harvest was so

great that the illustrious harvester went straight to what was most

urgent, the gathering of the crop, and left his successors to examine

the grain and the ear in detail. Nevertheless, in connection with the

Chalicodoma of the Walls, he mentions an experiment made by his

friend, Duhamel. (Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau (1700-1781), a

distinguished writer on botany and agriculture.--Translator's Note.)

He tells us how a Mason-bee's nest was enclosed in a glass funnel, the

mouth of which was covered merely with a bit of gauze. From it there

issued three males, who, after vanquishing mortar as hard as stone,

either never thought of piercing the flimsy gauze or else deemed the

work beyond their strength. The three Bees died under the funnel.

Reaumur adds that insects generally know only how to do what they have

to do in the ordinary course of nature.



The experiment does not satisfy me, for two reasons: first, to ask

workers equipped with tools for cutting clay as hard as granite to cut

a piece of gauze does not strike me as a happy inspiration; you cannot

expect a navvy's pick-axe to do the same work as a dressmaker's

scissors. Secondly, the transparent glass prison seems to me ill-

chosen. As soon as the insect has made a passage through the thickness

of its earthen dome, it finds itself in broad daylight; and to it

daylight means the final deliverance, means liberty. It strikes

against an invisible obstacle, the glass; and to it glass is nothing

at all and yet an obstruction. On the far side, it sees free space,

bathed in sunshine. It wears itself out in efforts to fly there,

unable to understand the futile nature of its attempts against that

strange barrier which it cannot see. It perishes, at last, of

exhaustion, without, in its obstinacy, giving a glance at the gauze

closing the conical chimney. The experiment must be renewed under

better conditions.



The obstacle which I select is ordinary brown paper, stout enough to

keep the insect in the dark and thin enough not to offer serious

resistance to the prisoner's efforts. As there is a great difference,

in so far as the actual nature of the barrier is concerned, between a

paper partition and a clay ceiling, let us begin by enquiring if the

Mason-bee of the Walls knows how or rather is able to make her way

through one of these partitions. The mandibles are pickaxes suitable

for breaking through hard mortar: are they also scissors capable of

cutting a thin membrane? This is the point to look into first of all.



In February, by which time the insect is in its perfect state, I take

a certain number of cocoons, without damaging them, from their cells

and insert them each in a separate stump of reed, closed at one end by

the natural wall of the node and open at the other. These pieces of

reed represent the cells of the nest. The cocoons are introduced with

the insect's head turned towards the opening. Lastly, my artificial

cells are closed in different ways. Some receive a stopper of kneaded

clay, which, when dry, will correspond in thickness and consistency

with the mortar ceiling of the natural nest. Others are plugged with a

cylinder of sorghum, at least a centimetre (.39 inch--Translator's

Note.) thick; and the remainder with a disk of brown paper solidly

fastened by the edge. All these bits of reed are placed side by side

in a box, standing upright, with the roof of my making at the top. The

insects, therefore, are in the exact position which they occupied in

the nest. To open a passage, they must do what they would have done

without my interference, they must break through the wall situated

above their heads. I shelter the whole under a wide bell-glass and

wait for the month of May, the period of the deliverance.



The results far exceed my anticipations. The clay stopper, the work of

my fingers, is perforated with a round hole, differing in no wise from

that which the Mason-bee contrives through her native mortar dome. The

vegetable barrier, new to my prisoners, namely, the sorghum cylinder,

also opens with a neat orifice, which might have been the work of a

punch. Lastly, the brown-paper cover allows the Bee to make her exit

not by bursting through, by making a violent rent, but once more by a

clearly defined round hole. My Bees therefore are capable of a task

for which they were not born; to come out of their reed cells they do

what probably none of their race did before them; they perforate the

wall of sorghum-pith, they make a hole in the paper barrier, just as

they would have pierced their natural clay ceiling. When the moment

comes to free themselves, the nature of the impediment does not stop

them, provided that it be not beyond their strength; and henceforth

the argument of incapacity cannot be raised when a mere paper barrier

is in question.



In addition to the cells made out of bits of reed, I put under the

bell-glass, at the same time, two nests which are intact and still

resting on their pebbles. To one of them I have attached a sheet of

brown paper pressed close against the mortar dome. In order to come

out, the insect will have to pierce first the dome and then the paper,

which follows without any intervening space. Over the other, I have

placed a little brown paper cone, gummed to the pebble. There is here,

therefore, as in the first case, a double wall--a clay partition and a

paper partition--with this difference, that the two walls do not come

immediately after each other, but are separated by an empty space of

about a centimetre at the bottom, increasing as the cone rises.



The results of these two experiments are quite different. The Bees in

the nest to which a sheet of paper was tightly stuck come out by

piercing the two enclosures, of which the outer wall, the paper

wrapper, is perforated with a very clean round hole, as we have

already seen in the reed cells closed with a lid of the same material.

We thus become aware, for the second time, that, when the Mason-bee is

stopped by a paper barrier, the reason is not her incapacity to

overcome the obstacle. On the other hand, the occupants of the nest

covered with the cone, after making their way through the earthen

dome, finding the sheet of paper at some distance, do not even try to

perforate this obstacle, which they would have conquered so easily had

it been fastened to the nest. They die under the cover without making

any attempt to escape. Even so did Reaumur's Bees perish in the glass

funnel, where their liberty depended only upon their cutting through a

bit of gauze.



This fact strikes me as rich in inferences. What! Here are sturdy

insects, to whom boring through granite is mere play, to whom a

stopper of soft wood and a paper partition are walls quite easy to

perforate despite the novelty of the material; and yet these vigorous

housebreakers allow themselves to perish stupidly in the prison of a

paper bag, which they could have torn open with one stroke of their

mandibles! They are capable of tearing it, but they do not dream of

doing so! There can be only one explanation of this suicidal inaction.

The insect is well-endowed with tools and instinctive faculties for

accomplishing the final act of its metamorphosis, namely, the act of

emerging from the cocoon and from the cell. Its mandibles provide it

with scissors, file, pick-axe and lever wherewith to cut, gnaw through

and demolish either its cocoon and its mortar enclosure or any other

not too obstinate barrier substituted for the natural covering of the

nest. Moreover--and this is an important proviso, except for which the

outfit would be useless--it has, I will not say the will to use those

tools, but a secret stimulus inviting it to employ them. When the hour

for the emergence arrives, this stimulus is aroused and the insect

sets to work to bore a passage. It little cares in this case whether

the material to be pierced be the natural mortar, sorghum-pith, or

paper: the lid that holds it imprisoned does not resist for long. Nor

even does it care if the obstacle be increased in thickness and a

paper wall be added outside the wall of clay: the two barriers, with

no interval between them, form but one to the Bee, who passes through

them because the act of getting out is still one act and one only.

With the paper cone, whose wall is a little way off, the conditions

are changed, though the total thickness of wall is really the same.

Once outside its earthen abode, the insect has done all that it was

destined to do in order to release itself; to move freely on the

mortar dome represents to it the end of the release, the end of the

act of boring. Around the nest a new barrier appears, the wall made by

the paper bag; but, in order to pierce this, the insect would have to

repeat the act which it has just accomplished, the act which it is not

intended to perform more than once in its life; it would, in short,

have to make into a double act that which by nature is a single one;

and the insect cannot do this, for the sole reason that it has not the

wish to. The Mason-bee perishes for lack of the smallest gleam of

intelligence. And this is the singular intellect in which it is the

fashion nowadays to see a germ of human reason! The fashion will pass

and the facts remain, bringing us back to the good old notions of the

soul and its immortal destinies.



Reaumur tells us how his friend Duhamel, having seized a Mason-bee

with a forceps when she had half entered the cell, head foremost, to

fill it with pollen-paste, carried her to a closet at some distance

from the spot where he captured her. The Bee got away from him in this

closet and flew out through the window. Duhamel made straight for the

nest. The Mason arrived almost as soon as he did and renewed her work.

She only seemed a little wilder, says the narrator, in conclusion.



Why were you not here with me, revered master, on the banks of the

Aygues, which is a vast expanse of pebbles for three-fourths of the

year and a mighty torrent when it rains? I should have shown you

something infinitely better than the fugitive escaping from the

forceps. You would have witnessed--and in so doing, would have shared

my surprise--not the brief flight of the Mason who, carried to the

nearest room, releases herself and forthwith returns to her nest in

that familiar neighbourhood, but long journeys through unknown

country. You would have seen the Bee whom I carried to a great

distance from her home, to quite unfamiliar ground, find her way back

with a geographical sense of which the Swallow, the Martin and the

Carrier-pigeon would not have been ashamed; and you would have asked

yourself, as I did, what incomprehensible knowledge of the local map

guides that mother seeking her nest.



To come to facts: it is a matter of repeating with the Mason-bee of

the Walls my former experiments with the Cerceris-wasps (Cf. "Insect

Life": chapter 19.--Translator's Note.), of carrying the insect, in

the dark, 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 of operation, which may

save him time at the outset. The insect intended for a long journey

must obviously be handled with certain precautions. There must be no

forceps employed, no pincers, which might maim a wing, strain it and

weaken the power of flight. While the Bee is in her cell, absorbed in

her work, I place a small glass test-tube over it. The Mason, when she

flies away, rushes into the tube, which enables me, without touching

her, to transfer her at once into a screw of paper. This I quickly

close. A tin box, an ordinary botanizing-case, serves to convey the

prisoners, each in her separate paper bag.



The most delicate business, that of marking each captive before

setting her free, is left to be done on the spot selected for the

starting-point. I use finely-powdered chalk, steeped in a strong

solution of gum arabic. The mixture, applied to some part of the

insect with a straw, leaves a white patch, which soon dries and

adheres to the fleece. When a particular Mason-bee has to be marked so

as to distinguish her from another in short experiments, such as I

shall describe presently, I confine myself to touching the tip of the

abdomen with my straw while the insect is half in the cell, head

downwards. The slight touch is not noticed by the Bee, who continues

her work quite undisturbed; but the mark is not very deep and moreover

it is in a rather bad place for any prolonged experiment, for the Bee

is constantly brushing her belly to detach the pollen and is sure to

rub it off sooner or later. I therefore make another one, dropping the

sticky chalk right in the middle of the thorax, between the wings.



It is hardly possible to wear gloves at this work: the fingers need

all their deftness to take up the restless Bee delicately and to

overpower her without rough pressure. It is easily seen that, though

the job may yield no other profit, you are at least sure of being

stung. The sting can be avoided with a little dexterity, but not

always. You have to put up with it. In any case, the Mason-bee's sting

is far less painful than that of the Hive-bee. The white spot is

dropped on the thorax; the Mason flies off; and the mark dries on the

journey.



I start with two Mason-bees of the Walls working at their nests on the

pebbles in the alluvia of the Aygues, not far from Serignan. I carry

them home with me to Orange, where I release them after marking them.

According to the ordnance-survey map, the distance is about two and a

half miles as the crow flies. The captives are set at liberty in the

evening, at a time when the Bees begin to leave off work for the day.

It is therefore probable that my two Bees will spend their night in

the neighbourhood.



Next morning, I go to the nests. The weather is still too cool and the

works are suspended. When the dew has gone, the Masons begin work. I

see one, but without a white spot, bringing pollen to one of the nests

which had been occupied by the travellers whom I am expecting. She is

a stranger who, finding the cell whose owner I myself had exiled

untenanted, has installed herself there and made it her property, not

knowing that it is already the property of another. She has perhaps

been victualling it since yesterday evening. Close upon ten o'clock,

when the heat is at its full, the mistress of the house suddenly

arrives: her title-deeds as the original occupant are inscribed for me

in undeniable characters on her thorax white with chalk. Here is one

of my travellers back.



Over waving corn, over fields all pink with sainfoin, she has covered

the two miles and a half; and here she is, back at the nest, after

foraging on the way, for the doughty creature arrives with her abdomen

yellow with pollen. To come home again from the verge of the horizon

is wonderful in itself; to come home with a well-filled pollen-brush

is superlative economy. A journey, even a forced journey, always

becomes a foraging-expedition.



She finds the stranger in the nest:



'What's this? I'll teach you!'



And the owner falls furiously upon the intruder, who possibly was

meaning no harm. A hot chase in mid-air now takes place between the

two Masons. From time to time, they hover almost without movement,

face to face, with only a couple of inches separating them, and here,

doubtless measuring forces with their eyes, they buzz insults at each

other. Then they go back and alight on the nest in dispute, first one,

then the other. I expect to see them come to blows, to make them draw

their stings. But my hopes are disappointed: the duties of maternity

speak in too imperious a voice for them to risk their lives and wipe

out the insult in a mortal duel. The whole thing is confined to

hostile demonstrations and a few insignificant cuffs.



Nevertheless, the real proprietress seems to derive double courage and

double strength from the feeling that she is in her rights. She takes

up a permanent position on the nest and receives the other, each time

that she ventures to approach, with an angry quiver of her wings, an

unmistakable sign of her righteous indignation. The stranger, at last

discouraged, retires from the field. Forthwith the Mason resumes her

work, as actively as though she had not just undergone the hardships

of a long journey.



One more word on these quarrels about property. It is not unusual,

when one Mason-bee is away on an expedition, for another, some

homeless vagabond, to call at the nest, take a fancy to it and set to

work on it, sometimes at the same cell, sometimes at the next, if

there are several vacant, which is generally the case in the old

nests. The first occupier, on her return, never fails to drive away

the intruder, who always ends by being turned out, so keen and

invincible is the mistress' sense of ownership. Reversing the savage

Prussian maxim, 'Might is right,' among the Mason-bees right is might,

for there is no other explanation of the invariable retreat of the

usurper, whose strength is not a whit inferior to that of the real

owner. If she is less bold, this is because she has not the tremendous

moral support of knowing herself in the right, which makes itself

respected, among equals, even in the brute creation.



The second of my travellers does not reappear, either on the day when

the first arrived or on the following days. I decide upon another

experiment, on this occasion with five subjects. The starting-place is

the same; and the place of arrival, the distance, the time of day, all

remain unchanged. Of the five with whom I experiment, I find three at

their nests next day; the two others are missing.



It is therefore fully established that the Mason-bee of the Walls,

carried to a distance of two and a half miles and released at a place

which she has certainly never seen before, is able to return to the

nest. But why do first one out of two and then two out of five fail to

join their fellows? What one can do cannot another do? Is there a

difference in the faculty that guides them over unknown ground? Or is

it not rather a difference in flying-power? I remember that my Bees

did not all start off with the same vigour. Some were hardly out of my

fingers before they darted furiously into the air, where I at once

lost sight of them, whereas the others came dropping down a few yards

away from me, after a short flight. The latter, it seems certain, must

have suffered on the journey, perhaps from the heat concentrated in

the furnace of my box. Or I may have hurt the articulation of the

wings in marking them, an operation difficult to perform when you are

guarding against stings. These are maimed, feeble creatures, who will

linger in the sainfoin-fields close by, and not the powerful aviators

required by the journey.



The experiment must be tried again, taking count only of the Bees who

start off straight from between my fingers with a clean, vigorous

flight. The waverers, the laggards who stop almost at once on some

bush shall be left out of the reckoning. Moreover, I will do my best

to estimate the time taken in returning to the nest. For an experiment

of this kind, I need plenty of subjects, as the weak and the maimed,

of whom there may be many, are to be disregarded. The Mason-bee of the

Walls is unable to supply me with the requisite number: there are not

enough of her; and I am anxious not to interfere too much with the

little Aygues-side colony, for whom I have other experiments in view.

Fortunately, I have at my own place, under the eaves of a shed, a

magnificent nest of Chalicodoma sicula in full activity. I can draw to

whatever extent I please on the populous city. The insect is small,

less than half the size of C. muraria, but no matter: it will deserve

all the more credit if it can traverse the two miles and a half in

store for it and find its way back to the nest. I take forty Bees,

isolating them, as usual, in screws of paper.



In order to reach the nest, I place a ladder against the wall: it will

be used by my daughter Aglae and will enable her to mark the exact

moment of the return of the first Bee. I set the clock on the

mantelpiece and my watch at the same time, so that we may compare the

instant of departure and of arrival. Things being thus arranged, I

carry off my forty captives and go to the identical spot where C.

muraria works, in the pebbly bed of the Aygues. The trip will have a

double object: to observe Reaumur's Mason and to set the Sicilian

Mason at liberty. The latter, therefore, will also have two and a half

miles to travel home.



At last my prisoners are released, all of them being first marked with

a big white dot in the middle of the thorax.



You do not come off scot-free when handling one after the other forty

wrathful Bees, who promptly unsheathe and brandish their poisoned

stings. The stab is but too often given before the mark is made. My

smarting fingers make movements of self-defence which my will is not

always able to control. I take hold with greater precaution for myself

than for the insect; I sometimes squeeze harder than I ought to if I

am to spare my travellers. To experiment so as to lift, if possible, a

tiny corner of the veil of truth is a fine and noble thing, a mighty

stimulant in the face of danger; but still one may be excused for

displaying some impatience when it is a matter of receiving forty

stings in one's fingers at one short sitting. If any man should

reproach me for being too careless with my thumbs, I would suggest

that he should have a try: he can then judge for himself the pleasures

of the situation.



To cut a long story short, either through the fatigue of the journey,

or through my fingers pressing too hard and perhaps injuring some

articulations, only twenty out of my forty Bees start with a bold,

vigorous flight. The others, unable to keep their balance, wander

about on the nearest bit of grass or remain on the osier-shoots on

which I have placed them, refusing to fly even when I tickle them with

a straw. These weaklings, these cripples, these incapables injured by

my fingers must be struck off my list. Those who started with an

unhesitating flight number about twenty. That is ample.



At the actual moment of departure, there is nothing definite about the

direction taken, none of that straight flight to the nest which the

Cerceris-wasps once showed me in similar circumstances. As soon as

they are liberated, the Mason-bees flee as though scared, some in one

direction, some in exactly the opposite direction. Nevertheless, as

far as their impetuous flight allows, I seem to perceive a quick

return on the part of those Bees who have started flying towards a

point opposite to their home; and the majority appear to me to be

making for those blue distances where their nest lies. I leave this

question with certain doubts which are inevitable in the case of

insects which I cannot follow with my eyes for more than twenty yards.



Hitherto, the operation has been favoured by calm weather; but now

things become complicated. The heat is stifling and the sky becomes

stormy. A stiff breeze springs up, blowing from the south, the very

direction which my Bees must take to return to the nest. Can they

overcome this opposing current and cleave the aerial torrent with

their wings? If they try, they will have to fly close to the ground,

as I now see the Bees do who continue their foraging; but soaring to

lofty regions, whence they can obtain a clear view of the country, is,

so it seems to me, prohibited. I am therefore very apprehensive as to

the success of my experiment when I return to Orange, after first

trying to steal some fresh secret from the Aygues Mason-bee of the

Pebbles.



I have scarcely reached the house before Aglae greets me, her cheeks

flushed with excitement:



'Two!' she cries. 'Two came back at twenty minutes to three, with a

load of pollen under their bellies!'



A friend of mine had appeared upon the scene, a grave man of the law,

who on hearing what was happening, had neglected code and stamped

paper and insisted upon also being present at the arrival of my

Carrier-pigeons. The result interested him more than his case about a

party-wall. Under a tropical sun, in a furnace heat reflected from the

wall of the shed, every five minutes he climbed the ladder bare-

headed, with no other protection against sunstroke than his thatch of

thick, grey locks. Instead of the one observer whom I had posted, I

found two good pairs of eyes watching the Bees' return.



I had released my insects at about two o'clock; and the first arrivals

returned to the nest at twenty minutes to three. They had therefore

taken less than three-quarters of an hour to cover the two miles and a

half, a very striking result, especially when we remember that the

Bees did some foraging on the road, as was proved by the yellow pollen

on their bellies, and that, on the other hand, the travellers' flight

must have been hindered by the wind blowing against them. Three more

came home before my eyes, each with her load of pollen, an outward and

visible sign of the work done on the journey. As it was growing late,

our observations had to cease. When the sun goes down, the Mason-bees

leave the nest and take refuge somewhere or other, perhaps under the

tiles of the roofs, or in little corners of the walls. I could not

reckon on the arrival of the others before work was resumed, in the

full sunshine.



Next day, when the sun recalled the scattered workers to the nest, I

took a fresh census of Bees with a white spot on the thorax. My

success exceeded all my hopes: I counted fifteen, fifteen of the

transported prisoners of the day before, storing their cells or

building as though nothing out of the way had happened. The weather

had become more and more threatening; and now the storm burst and was

followed by a succession of rainy days which prevented me from

continuing.



The experiment suffices as it stands. Of some twenty Bees who had

seemed fit to make the long journey when I released them, fifteen at

least had returned: two within the first hour, three in the course of

the evening and the rest next morning. They had returned in spite of

having the wind against them and--a graver difficulty still--in spite

of being unacquainted with the locality to which I had transported

them. There is, in fact, no doubt that they were setting eyes for the

first time on those osier-beds of the Aygues which I had selected as

the starting-point. Never would they have travelled so far afield of

their own accord, for everything that they want for building and

victualling under the roof of my shed is within easy reach. The path

at the foot of the wall supplies the mortar; the flowery meadows

surrounding my house furnish nectar and pollen. Economical of their

time as they are, they do not go flying two miles and a half in search

of what abounds at a few yards from the nest. Besides, I see them

daily taking their building-materials from the path and gathering

their harvest on the wild-flowers, especially on the meadow sage. To

all appearance, their expeditions do not cover more than a radius of a

hundred yards or so. Then how did my exiles return? What guided them?

It was certainly not memory, but some special faculty which we must

content ourselves with recognizing by its astonishing effects without

pretending to explain it, so greatly does it transcend our own

psychology.