Long ago, when I used to scatter a handful of Chalicodomae some way from home, in order to study their capacity for finding their nest again, I noticed that, if they were too long absent, the laggards found their cells closed on their return. Neighbours had taken the opportunity to lay their eggs there, after finishing the building and stocking it with provisions. The abandoned property benefited another. On realizing the usurpation, the Bee returning from her long journey soon consoled herself for the mishap. She began to break the seals of some cell or other, adjoining her own; the rest let her have her way, being doubtless too busy with their present labours to seek a quarrel with the freebooter. As soon as she had destroyed the lid, the Bee, with a sort of feverish haste that burned to repay theft by theft, did a little building, did a little victualling, as though to resume the thread of her occupations, destroyed the egg in being, laid her own and closed the cell again. Here was a touch of nature that deserved careful examination. At eleven o'clock in the morning, when the work is at its height, I mark half-a-score of Chalicodomae with different colours, to distinguish them from one another. Some are occupied with building, others are disgorging honey. I mark the corresponding cells in the same way. As soon as the marks are quite dry, I catch the ten Bees, place them singly in screws of paper and shut them all in a box until the next morning. After twenty-four hours' captivity, the prisoners are released. During their absence, their cells have disappeared under a layer of recent structures; or, if still exposed to view, they are closed and others have made use of them. As soon as they are free, the ten Bees, with one exception, return to their respective tiles. They do more than this, so accurate is their memory, despite the confusion resulting from a prolonged incarceration: they return to the cell which they have built, the beloved stolen cell; they minutely explore the outside of it, or at least what lies nearest to it, if the cell has disappeared under the new structures. In cases where the home is not henceforward inaccessible, it is at least occupied by a strange egg and the door is securely fastened. To this reverse of fortune the ousted ones retort with the brutal lex talionis: an egg for an egg, a cell for a cell. You've stolen my house; I'll steal yours. And, without much hesitation, they proceed to force the lid of a cell that suits them. Sometimes they recover possession of their own home, if it is possible to get into it; sometimes and more frequently they seize upon some one else's, even at a considerable distance from their original dwelling.