318 INSECT CARPENTRY. 



thus thickens his bit of new wall, we gradually lose sight, behind 

 it, both of the builder and his operations ; but we can guess 

 at their conclusion, for, having thus made whole again, exter- 

 nally, his damaged domicile, there is little doubt but that he 

 completes it within by restoration also of its soft and silken 

 tapestry. 



But, in truth, we must have done with masons, be they 

 wasps, bees, ants, or caterpillars, or we shall have to overpass 

 entirely that department of our gallery allotted to the labours, 

 and exhibiting the works, of those amongst the same insects 

 which are used to exercise the craft of carpentry. Various of 

 them are here employed as in their native workshops, furnished 

 "with all appliances and means' for their ingenious opera- 

 tions; but the progress of these we have not time to follow, 

 so must be content, for the present, witli inspection of some 

 articles or architectures, the produce of their tools more 

 properly their tool that compound chisel, plane, and forceps, 

 all (as in the masons) united in the jaws or teeth of our car- 

 penter artisans. As with the masons, also, all these carpenters 

 amongst wasps, bees, and ants are females ; all work under the 

 prompting of maternal love, or an affection of resembling 

 kind ; their buildings are all nests ; their chambers nurseries 

 for the protection of, and furnished usually with supplies for, 

 their respective young. 



Not as one of the most perfect, but as one of the simplest 

 >!' these collected specimens, let us look, first, at this nest of a. 



