Now from the very first a suspicious something caught my attention. If a scholar were sent to plant a distant stake I saw him frequently pause, stoop, rise, seek about, and stoop again, forgetful of straight line and of signals. Another, whose work it was to pick up pegs, forgot the iron spike and took a pebble instead; and a third, deaf to the measurements of the angle, crumbled up a clod. The greater number were caught licking a bit of straw, and polygons stood still, and diagonals came to grief. What could be the mystery? I inquired, and all was explained. Searcher and observer born, the scholar was well aware of what the master was ignorant of—namely, that a great black bee makes earthen nests on the pebbles of the harmas, and that in these nests there is honey. My surveyors were opening and emptying the cells with a straw. I was instructed in the proper method. The honey, though somewhat strong-flavoured, is very acceptable; I in turn acquired a taste for it, and joined the nest-hunters. Later, the polygon was resumed. Thus it was that for the first time I saw Réaumur’s Mason Bee, knowing neither its history nor its historian. This splendid Hymenopteron, with its dark violet wings and costume of black velvet, its rustic constructions on the sun-warmed pebbles among the thyme, its honey, which brought diversion from the severities of compass and square, made a strong impression on my mind, and I wished to know more about it than my pupils had taught me—namely, how to rob the cells of their honey with a straw. Just then my bookseller had for sale a magnificent work on insects, The Natural History of Articulated Animals, by de Castelnau, E. Blanchard, and Lucas. It was enriched with many engravings which caught the eye. But alas, it had a price—such a price! What did that matter? My 700 francs ought surely to suffice for everything—food for the mind as well as for the body. That which I bestowed on the one I retrenched from the other—a balance of accounts to which whoever takes science for a livelihood must needs resign himself. The purchase was made. That day I bled my university stipend abundantly; I paid away a whole month of it. It took a miracle of parsimony to fill up the enormous deficit. The book was devoured—I can use no other word. There I learned the name of my black bee, and there I read for the first time details of the habits of insects, and found, with what seemed to my eyes an aureole round them, the venerated names of Réaumur, Huber, Léon Dufour; and while I turned the pages for the hundredth time, a voice whispered vaguely, “Thou too shalt be a historian of animals!” Naïve illusions! where are you? But let us banish these recollections, both sweet and sad, and come to the doings of our black bee.