SOCIAL LIFE OF WASPS 25 



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for whose pioneering Man might never have been 

 that undoubtedly bend matter to their will out- 

 side their bodies. Think of the nest-builders 

 like the house-martins and weaver-birds, the net- 

 makers like the spiders, the home-makers like the 

 termites and beavers, the trap-contrivers like the 

 larval ant-lions, the store-accumulators like the 

 bees, the bed-makers like the anthropoid apes, and 

 so on, not forgetting, as a sort of climax, the honey- 

 mooning bower-birds. It may not be "art" that 

 these creatures show, but there is no doubt as to 

 their triumphantly skilful use of materials. Samuel 

 Butler declared that animals have tools which are 

 part of them and cannot be laid down; whereas 

 man has limbs which are apart from him and 

 detachable. Which is, in the main, good sense. 

 But whether a living creature planes with a tool 

 or with its mandibles, it planes; and that requires 

 skill. And the planing is only the first step toward 

 the wasp's nest, which, taken objectively, is a far 

 finer thing than many a human erection which 

 entitles its tenant to a vote. 



And it is not only the architecture of wasps that 

 commands our admiration; there is the coherence 

 of the large family or community, sometimes 

 numbering several thousand members; there is 

 the creature's strength, displayed in lifting a drone- 

 fly half its own size off the ground and carrying, 

 it through the air; there is contrivance in cutting 

 off the wings of a big insect before it tries to 

 transport it through the air; there is the uncanny 



