The man who knows how to use his eyes in his garden will observe, some day or other, a number of curious holes in the leaves of his lilac- and rose-trees, some of them round, some oval, as if idle but skilful hands had been at work with the pinking-iron. In some places, there is scarcely anything but the veins of the leaves left. The author of the mischief is a grey-clad Bee, a Megachile. For scissors, she has her mandibles; for compasses, producing now an oval and anon a circle, she has her eye and the pivot of her body. The pieces cut out are made into thimble-shaped wallets, destined to contain the honey and the egg: the larger, oval pieces supply the floor and sides; the smaller, round pieces are reserved for the lid. A row of these thimbles, placed one on top of the other, up to a dozen or more, though often there are less: that is, roughly, the structure of the Leaf-cutter's nest. When taken out of the recess in which the mother has manufactured it, the cylinder of cells seems to be an indivisible whole, a sort of tunnel obtained by lining with leaves some gallery dug underground. The real thing does not correspond with its appearance: under the least pressure of the fingers, the cylinder breaks up into equal sections, which are so many compartments independent of their neighbours as regards both floor and lid. This spontaneous break up shows us how the work is done. The method agrees with those adopted by the other Bees. Instead of a general scabbard of leaves, afterwards subdivided into compartments by transverse partitions, the Megachile constructs a string of separate wallets, each of which is finished before the next is begun. A structure of this sort needs a sheath to keep the pieces in place while giving them the proper shape. The bag of leaves, in fact, as turned out by the worker, lacks stability; its numerous pieces, not glued together, but simply placed one after the other, come apart and give way as soon as they lose the support of the tunnel that keeps them united. Later, when it spins its cocoon, the larva infuses a little of its fluid silk into the gaps and solders the pieces to one another, especially the inner ones, so much so that the insecure bag in due course becomes a solid casket whose component parts it is no longer possible to separate entirely.