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