Wasps and Such. 159 



than Frank R. Cheshire, there is no use in trying. Ah, 

 gentle reader, there is a book that was worth while to 

 write just as a piece of literature, to say no more. If 

 you have not read it, a great pleasure awaits you. Ants, 

 too, though not so immediately valuable to man, have 

 undoubtedly done him a great service in stirring up the 

 ground and making it fit for cultivation, although we 

 probably have to thank the common angle-worm that we 

 have any arable soil at all. Ants I will speak of in the 

 next chapter, but just now I want to say a good word for 

 the wasp. 



As I recollect them they were far better marksmen than 

 the Filipinos are reported to be, and as fighters they can- 

 not be surpassed. Hornets are generally strong enough 

 to extract their stings and use them over again, but a 

 yellow" jacket, like the hive-bee, is often irreparably 

 wrecked by the attack. It is not held back on that 

 account, however. It sails right in and plants an argu- 

 ment where it thinks it will do the most good. We make 

 a great to-do about charges at Balaklava and ail that sort 

 of thing, where some fool generally sends his men to 

 destruction through not knowing any better, and the men 

 fight on, knowing that they will be killed, but not daring 

 to disobey. The w r asp, on the other hand, fights of its 

 own free will for its country, knowing surely that it will 

 be killed, but glad to offer up its life if the good of the 

 community is thereby subserved. I call that real courage. 



In civilized communities, where experience has taught 

 it that those who try to teach it to sing the Star Spangled 

 Banner are beings that wear clothes, it goes for a man's 

 bare hands and face, but in sparsely settled countries, 

 where the benevolent assimilators are four-footed and 

 customarily wear fur, if a man attacks it, it snuggles 

 down into his hair, and jabs its red-hot bolo into the 



