She chews the leaves of some mucilaginous plant, some mallow perhaps, and then prepares a sort of green putty with which she builds her partitions and finally closes the entrance to the dwelling.

When she settles in the spacious cells of the Masked Anthophora (Anthophora personata, Illig.), the entrance to the gallery, which is wide enough to admit a man's finger, is closed with a voluminous plug of this vegetable paste.

On the earthy banks, hardened by the sun, the home is then betrayed by the gaudy colour of the lid.

It is as though the authorities had closed the door and affixed to it their great seals of green wax.
So far then as their building-materials are concerned, the Osmiae whom I have been able to observe are divided into two classes: one building compartments with mud, the other with a green-tinted vegetable putty.
To the latter belongs Latreille's Osmia.

The first section includes the Horned Osmia and the Three-horned Osmia, both so remarkable for the horny tubercles on their faces.
The great reed of the south, Arundo donax, is often used, in the country, for making rough garden-shelters against the mistral or just for fences.