The reality of the mother’s regard for the young is proved among many insects by the building of a nest to safeguard the family. The Anthidium, or tailor-bee, and the Chalicodoma, a species of wild bee, afford illustrations of this maternal forethought. In the former case the eggs, when laid, are placed in the ground, protected in cotton-felt satchels made by the mother from fibre which she scratches with her mandibles from the cobwebby stalks of the yellow centaury; the Chalicodoma works with cement and gravel carefully selected from some ruined building, and with such difficult material she fashions her nursery. Even more remarkable is the home of the Magachilles, or leaf-cutting bee. The mother bee, using her mandibles as scissors, cuts pieces from the leaves of the trees, wherewith she forms thimble-shaped wallets to contain the honey and eggs; the larger oval pieces which she cuts make the sides and the floor, and the round pieces the lid or door. These leaf-formed thimbles are placed in a row, one on top of the other, sometimes as many as a dozen being used. The cylinder thus formed is fitted into the deserted home of some other insect, such as the tunnels of fat earth-worms, the apartments bored in the trunks of trees by the larvæ of the Capricorn beetles, or, failing these, a reed stump or crevice in the wall is selected. But the choice of the home is always carefully made, it would seem, according to the tastes of the mothers. This structure, in part made and in part borrowed, forms the leaf-cutter’s nest.[11] Numerous cases of home-making might be recorded, and the difficulty rests in the selection. Many spiders and the book scorpion carry their eggs in a silken bag attached to the under surface of the body. There is a case recorded that shows heroic devotion on the part of one spider mother. She was placed (in order that her behaviour might be watched) in the pit of an ant-lion. At once the enemy seized the eggs and tore them from her charge. Then the mother, though she was driven out of the pit, returned and chose to be dragged in and buried alive rather than desert her charge.[12] A regular process of incubation is practised by the mother earwig, and the young, when hatched, keep close to her for protection. Special food for the young is prepared by many mothers, as, for instance, among the _apidæ_, who prepare a disgorged food in the form of a sweet milk juice. The _Hymenoptera_ mothers, upon whom the cares of motherhood devolve in their fulness, provide board and lodging for their family. Stores of insects are caught and preserved in the nursery larder, being cunningly paralysed so that live food may be ready when needed by the children. These clever mothers, as Fabre has shown us, become masters of a host of arts for the benefit of a family which their faceted eyes will never see.