WASPS, SOCIAL AND SOLITARY 



departed. Her stay was brief, for at just thirty-five 

 minutes after nine she returned, and at once settled 

 down to her work. 



We now began to make notes as to the length of time 

 that it took her to go down and bring back her load. We 

 timed her again and again, and found that she was 

 remarkably regular, each of her trips occupying from 

 forty-five to fifty seconds. 



All that day we kept her under strict surveillance, and 

 never once did she suspend her operations either for rest 

 or refreshment. Late in the afternoon, while we sat 

 watching her as she appeared and disappeared with 

 almost the regularity of clockwork, we found it difficult 

 to realize that the patient little creature had been at 

 work for more than twenty-four hours, with only one 

 brief intermission. Without hurry or flurry she kept at 

 her task, reminding us, in her business-like ways, of the 

 social wasps of the genus Vespa. When we left her, 

 at dusk, we attached the recording tube to the stem, 

 and at ten o'clock in the evening we found that she 

 had not stopped working. We emptied the glass, and 

 left her. 



At seven o'clock in the morning of July twenty-ninth 

 we paid her a visit, and could scarcely believe the testi- 

 mony of our senses when we saw that the record was one 



no 



