Wasps and Such. 161 



shell by wasps. Pick it up and you will notice them 

 backing out. If your hand happens to be over the hole 

 they come out of, you are likely to notice it sooner. It 

 is a way they have, this backing out. It pays them. 



They hang around butchers' shops a good deal, but the 

 little meat the}- steal is more than paid for by the number 

 of flies they kill. They are death on flies. Pigs loafing 

 in the sunshine soon get covered with flies, but they don't 

 last long when there are wasps about. \Yasps have been 

 seen to catch between three and four hundred flies on 

 two cows in twenty minutes, and, considering that every- 

 one of those flies meant nothing but devilment, wasps 

 cannot but be regarded as beneficial institutions. The 

 white cabbage butterflies, recently imported from Europe, 

 and which have taken possession of the country, are such 

 bad-tasting things that the hungriest insect-eating bird 

 will reject them with loathing, but wasps look upon them 

 with favor. F. H. Chittcndcn has noticed Polistcs walk- 

 ing all over cabbage plants, looking for the caterpillars. 

 Out in the sunny part of the patch, where the light was 

 good, he observed that the caterpillars had been exter- 

 minated, but where the cabbages were in the shade of trees 

 the caterpillars were very bad. The wasps could not 

 see therm w r ell. 



It would be an excellent thing for us if we could do 

 for beef, mutton, and poultry, what the wasp does for 

 the things it slaughters for food. It isn't alone what she 



fj <T* 



eats herself, but what she takes home to the children, if 

 she be a social wasp, or provides for their nourishment 

 if she be a solitary. Such a thing as cold storage is 

 obviously out of the question for her, and yet fresh meat 

 is desirable, so she has ways, differing with each subject, 

 of keeping it alive enough to preserve it sweet and yet 

 not so much alive as to be able to get away. She 



