48 Insect Architecture, 



of the nest which she forms for her progeny. She does not raisp.lacc !ier 

 embellishments with the error of some human artists. Slie desires security 

 as well as elegance ; and therefore she leaves no external traces of her 

 operations. Hers is not a mansion rich with columns and friezes without, 

 .but cold and unfurnished within, like the desolate palaces of Venice, fehe 

 .covers her tapestry quite round with the common eai'th, and leaves her 

 eggs enclosed in their poppy-case with a certainty that the outward show 

 of her labours will attract no plunderer." (p. 55.) 



'. The industry of the bee has become proverbial : the marau- 

 der wasp also, though her labours are unattended v/ith the 

 same profitable results to mankind, works equally hard in her 

 vocation, and displays no less ingenuity in the formation of 

 her habitation and the manufacture of her cells. On the 

 material with which the wasp family construct their nest, v/e 

 have the following interesting remarks : — 



" The wasp is a paper-maker, and a most perfect and intelligent one. 

 While mankind were arriving, by slow degrees, at the art of fabricating this 

 valuable substance, the wasp was making it before their eyes, by very much 

 the same process as that by which human hands now manufacture it with 

 the best aid of chemistry and machinery. While some nations carved their 

 records on wood, and stone, and brass, and leaden tablets, — others, more 

 advanced, wrote with a style on wax, — others employed the inner bark of 

 trees, and others the skins of animals rudely prepared, — the wasp was manu- 

 facturing a firm and durable paper. Even when the papyrus was rendered 

 more fit, by a process of art, for the transmission of ideas in writing, the 

 wasp was a better aitisan than the Egyptians ; for the early attempts at 

 paper-making were so rude, that the substance produced was almost useless, 

 from being extremely friable. The paper of the papyrus was formed of the 

 leaves of the plant, dried, pressed, and polished ; the wasp alone knew how 

 to reduce vegetable fibres to a pulp, and then unit6 them by a size or glue, 

 spreading the iuhstance out into a smooth and delit^ate leaf. This is 

 exactly the process of paper-making. It would seem that the wasp Ifnows, 

 as the modern paper-makers now know, that the. fibres of rags, whether 

 linen or cotton, are not the only materials that can be used in the form- 

 ation of paper: she employs other vegetable matters, converting theni into 

 a proper consistency by her assiduous exertions. In some respects she is 

 more skilful even than our paper-makers ; for she takes care to retain her 

 fibres of sufficient length, by which she renders her paper as strong as she 

 requires. Many manufacturers of the present day cut their materials into 

 small bits, and thus produce a rotten article. One great distinction between 

 good and bad paper is its toughness ; and this difference is invariably pro- 

 duced by the fibre of which it is composed being long, and therefore tough ; 

 or short, and therefore friable. 



" The wasp has been labouring at her manufacture of paper, from her first 

 creation, with precisely the same instruments and the same materials ; and 

 her success has been unvarying. Her machinery is very simple, and there- 

 fore it is never out of order. She learns nothing, and she forgets nothing- 

 Men, from time to time, lose their excellence in particular arts, and they 

 are slow in finding out real improvements. Such improvements are often 

 the effect of accident. Paper is now manufactured very extensively by ma- 

 chinery in all its stages ; and thus, instead of a single sheet being made by 

 hand, a stream of paper is poured out, which would form a roll large enough 

 to extend round the globe, if such a length were desirable. The inventors of 

 this machinery, Messrs. Fourdrinier, it is said, spent the enormous sum of 

 40,000/. in vain attempts to render the machine capable of determining with 



