STRUCTURE OV WASPS* NESTS. 227 



and the giantess of her kind who disappeared within it. At 

 her business there we may now make a tolerable guess, namely, 

 that, as survivor of an old house, and sole foundress of a new 

 one, she was employed in laying its foundations, having availed 

 herself, as is not uncommonly the case, of the previous labours 

 of a mouse, to save her own, in the preparatory business 

 of excavation. Quite as frequently, however, the foundress 

 Wasp is indebted to no other agency than that of her own 

 powerful jaws and claws for the digging out and carrying away 

 of the earth in which she forms her burrow, a chamber 

 usually of one or two feet in diameter, approachable from with- 

 out by a narrow entrance gallery.* This subterranean area 

 being found or formed, her next operation is to lay witliin it 

 the foundations or walls of her intended city. For this purpose, 

 earth is a material which will not serve her turn, and the 

 nature of that which she employs was long a puzzle. The 

 substance of which the walls and cells of a vespiary are con- 

 structed is now, however, ascertained to be none other than 

 paper formed of wood-raspings, mixed with a sort of size, 

 worked to a paste, and subsequently spread into sheets by the 

 Insect fabricator. 



We have continually noticed, and any one in summer-time 

 may do the same, a Wasp busily at work with its jaws upon 

 an old paling or window frame. Now, many may suppose that 

 there is little in this worthy of observation ; but simply from 



* See Insect Architecture, p. 73. 



