Matters may take a yet more serious turn, so obstinate and imperious is the desire to harvest the store securely. The unfinished cell that the bee refuses to accept instead of her own complete one, with its honey, is sometimes, as I have said, among several containing paste and egg, and newly closed. In this case I have seen, though not always, the following sight. Having ascertained unmistakably that the unfinished cell will not do, the bee begins to gnaw the cover of a neighbouring one. With her saliva she softens a spot in the mortar, and patiently digs away atom by atom in the hard covering. A long half hour passes before the tiny dimple excavated is big enough to receive a pin’s head. I waited. Then I got out of patience, and, feeling sure that she wanted to open the storehouse, I decided to help her and shorten the labour. With the point of my knife I knocked off the top; but the crown of the cell came off too, and its edge was a good deal broken. In my clumsiness I had made a graceful vase into a wretched, shattered pot. I was right; the bee wanted to break open the door, and without troubling herself as to the fragmentary state of the orifice, she immediately established herself in the cell opened to her. Many times did she bring honey and pollen, though the store was already complete. Finally, in this cell containing an egg not hers she laid her own egg, and then closed, as best she could, the shattered mouth. Thus this bee, who was engaged in bringing food, neither could nor would be baffled by the impossibility brought about by me of continuing her work unless she completed the cell which replaced hers. What she was doing she persisted in doing in spite of obstacles. She accomplished her task thoroughly, but in the most absurd way,—by breaking into another bee’s cell, continuing to store in a cell already overflowing, placing an egg where the real owner had already laid one, and finally, closing an orifice which needed serious repairs. Could one desire a better proof of the irresistible impulse obeyed by the insect?