The other Bee, who is very much more frequently seen and is called Anthophora pilipes, leaves the opening of her corridor bare. The chinks between the stones in old walls and abandoned hovels, or exposed surfaces of sand stone or marl, are found suitable for her labours; but the favourite spots, those to which the greatest number of swarms resort, are straight stretches of ground exposed to the south, such as occur in the cuttings of deeply-sunken roads. Here, over areas many yards in width, the wall is drilled with a multitude of holes, which give to the earthy mass the look of some enormous sponge. These round holes might have been made with a gimlet, so regular are they. Each is the entrance to a winding corridor, which runs to the depth of four or five inches. The cells are at the far end. If we wish to watch the labours of the industrious Bee we must visit her workshop during the latter half of May. Then—but at a respectful distance—we may see, in all its bewildering activity, the tumultuous, buzzing swarm, busied with the building and provisioning of the cells. But it has been most often during the months of August and September, the happy months of the summer holidays, that I have visited the banks inhabited by the Anthophora. At this season all is silent near the nests: the work has long been completed: and numbers of Spiders’ webs line the crevices or plunge their silken tubes into the Bees’ corridors. That is no reason, however, for hastily abandoning the city that was once so full of life and bustle, and now appears deserted. A few inches below the surface, thousands of grubs are imprisoned in their cells of clay, resting until the coming spring. Surely these grubs, which are paralysed and incapable of self-defence, must be a temptation—fat little morsels as they are—to some kind of parasite, some kind of insect stranger in search of prey. The matter is worth inquiring into. Two facts are at once noticeable. Some dismal-looking Flies, half black and half white, are flying indolently from gallery to gallery, evidently with the object of laying their eggs there. Many of them are hanging dry and lifeless in the Spiders’ webs. At other places the entire surface of a bank is hung with the dried corpses of a certain Beetle, called the Sitaris. Among the corpses, however, are a few live Beetles, both male and female. The female Beetle invariably disappears into the Bees’ dwelling. Without a doubt she, too, lays her eggs there. If we give a few blows of the pick to the surface of the bank we shall find out something more about these things. During the early days of August this is what we shall see: the cells forming the top layer are unlike those at a greater depth. The difference is owing to the fact that the same establishment is used by two kinds of Bee, the Anthophora and the Osmia.