INTRODUCTION 



the sands upon the beach. I had not reckoned with the 

 Peckhams and their solitary wasps. The solitary ways 

 of these insects seem to bring out their individual traits, 

 and they differ one from another, more than any other 

 wild creatures known to me. It has been thought that 

 man is the only tool-using animal, yet here is one of these 

 wasps, Ammophila, that uses a little pebble to pound 

 down the earth over her nest. She takes the pebble in 

 her mandibles, as you or I would take a stone in our 

 hand, and uses it as a hammer to pound down the soil 

 above the cavity that holds her egg. This is a remark- 

 able fact ; so far as I know there is no other animal on 

 this continent that makes any mechanical use of an 

 object or substance foreign to its own body in this way. 

 The act stamps Ammophila as a tool-using animal. 



I am free to confess that I have had more delight in 

 reading this book than in reading any other nature book 

 in a long time. Such a queer little people as it reveals to 

 us, so whimsical, so fickle, so fussy, so forgetful, so wise 

 and yet so foolish, such victims of routine and yet so 

 individual, with such apparent foresight and yet such 

 thoughtlessness, finding their way back to the same 

 square inch of earth in the monotonous expanse of a 

 wide plowed field with unfailing accuracy, and then at 

 times finishing their cell and sealing it up without the 



xiv 



