312 VESPIAN MASONRY. 



edge of her excavation. Thus proceeding, as her pit deepens 

 her tower rises, and will rise still, to the height, perhaps, of 

 two or three inches. We may find fault, perhaps, with the 

 masonry of her walls ; they are by no means perpendicular, 

 like, rather, to those of the leaning tower of Pisa ;* nor are 

 they certainly very solid or compact, looking somewhat, with 

 their open interstices, as if riddled by fairy shot ; but our 

 little architect knows well what she is about, she intends her 

 erection to serve only as a temporary tower of protection while 

 at work, and its separate pellets (her pile of bricks ready to 

 In T hand) will soon be wanted, and soon taken down to line, 

 to wall up as it were, the sandy sides of her excavated cell. 



In the two architectural processes we have just been watch- 

 ing, we have seen the several operations of excavation, plas- 

 tering, and the raising of walls by the piling on each other of 

 separate artificial masses, wanting but size to constitute them 

 bricks or blocks. Ask you now the purpose of these arts in 

 their miniature exercise, and the name of their tiny exercisers ? 

 The latter, whom perhaps from their exterior you may have 

 known already, are wasps, not vulgar and social, but solitary 

 in their labours, " mason" wasps, t mother wasps, and they are 

 scooping their caves, and raising their towers, with no selfish, 

 no ambitious, no mercenary aim, but under the nobler, ten- 

 derer impetus of maternal love, and to provide secure asylums 

 for their nurseling young. 



* See Vignette. f Odytierus. 



