"Softly, boys, softly. I have two things to say to you before I begin. In the first place, I am very glad to hear that you think and talk among yourselves about the things which I tell you: and in the next place, I know that you love _me_, and, therefore would not wish, by _puzzling_ me, as you call it, to produce mortification or vexation; nor do I think that I should have felt either vexed or mortified had I not been able to find tailors among the lower animals; but I do not wish you to take pleasure in puzzling people; for it is very apt to produce in you a feeling of triumph, and to make you vain: and you must remember that for _one_ of your questions which cannot be answered, a _thousand_ might be put to you, of the answer to which you would be ignorant. No man, my dear boys, knows every thing. Wise men talk with each other, that they may learn from each other; and the wisest are not ashamed to acknowledge their ignorance of some things; and I believe they take very little pleasure in puzzling. It is our duty to learn all that we can, and to be always willing at a proper time to teach others what we know." "Thank you, dear Uncle Philip, for your advice. We did not mean to triumph over _you_, if you had not been able to tell us of tailors among the animals. But we see that you are right. We might get a foolish habit, which would do us harm." "Exactly what I meant, boys; and now let us begin. And first we will talk of the cutting out, as the tailor always does that before he sews. There is a kind of bee[1] which, like some of the insects we have already spoken of, is furnished with a borer. With this she forms a round hole, like that made with an auger or gimlet, in a hard-trodden path, or sometimes in a piece of soft decayed wood. It is in making her nest in this hole that she plays the part of a tailor, for the nest is made of leaves, sometimes taken from the rose, at others from the birch, ash, or other trees. The little creature cuts them commonly, and I believe always, into two shapes. They are either half-oval, that is, half the shape of the bowl of a spoon, or round, and are of different sizes. Sometimes she makes a mistake in the size, and when she finds it out, she alters it. These leaves are prepared to line the hole which she has bored, and she begins with the largest pieces; taking them into the hole, she winds around in it, until she has spread very smoothly a tube of leaves the whole length of it; she then closes up one end of it by rounding it off and doubling the pieces of leaf one over another. In this case she sets about making her _cells_. She takes three of her half-oval pieces which have been cut to fit, and contrives to roll them, so that the edge of one piece will just lap over the edge of the next; these, when she has finished rolling them, make the hollow of the cell, which is not quite an inch high. She next turns up the ends of these pieces, which are cut to fit, so as to form the bottom: she then sets to