Wasps and Such. 165 



But it proved that wasps have a memory for colors, an 

 experiment rather unnecessary, in my judgment, since 

 wasps are colored differently for different species, which 

 argues to my mind that they have an eye for the artistic. 

 Moreover, each species carries a regular crest or coat-of- 

 arms, almost truly escutcheon-shaped, on the forehead 

 right above the jaws, and the families are to be told 

 apart by it. 



Wasps are more sociable than bees. If they meet 

 another wasp, they stop and chat, and perhaps give a little 

 taste of honey to her, even though she may not be of the 

 same hive at all. Bees are very mean about that. They 

 fight bees from other hives. But, on the other hand, 

 wasps do not tell each other where food is to be found. 

 Bees do. Each wasp hunts her own insects and flower- 

 cups. The rest of her nest-mates have the same privilege, 

 but she isn't going out of her way to help them. 



They are very tidy creatures, and are always washing 

 their faces and hands and fixing their antennae with a 

 sort of little pocket-comb they always carry. They get 

 into this habit as men tug at their mustaches when think- 

 ing. \Yhen the bee goes into the hive she unhooks her 

 front from her back wings, but the wasp folds hers up like 

 a fan with three sticks. Besides humming with her 

 wings, the wasp has a true voice, as you remember I told 

 you the fly has. It does not come out of her throat, but 

 out of the breathing-holes on the side. 



Wasps do not winter over as a colony. Come spring, 

 the queen crawls out from some place in which she has 

 survived the glacial period and starts to build an entirely 

 new house. She does all her own work at first. She 

 bites off fibers of wood from rail fences and weathered 

 boards and with the paper she makes from the pulp con- 

 structs first a slender stem, to which are attached three 



