PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 24, NO. 7-8, OCT.-NOV., 1922 179 



A yellow flame he seems to be, 

 When darting suddenly from on high, 

 He lights where fallen peaches lie." 



The methods used in the 18th century to protect choice fruits 

 from wasps are given in John Phillips's didactic poem entitled 

 "Cyder": 



let every bough 



Bear frequent vials, pregnant with the dregs 



Of Moyle, or Mum, or Treacle's viscous juice; 



They by the alluring odor drawn, in haste 



Fly to the dulcet cates, and crowding sip 



Their palatable bane; joyful thou'lt see 



The clammy surface all o'erstrown with tribes 



Of greedy insects that with fruitless toil 



Flap filmy pennons oft to extricate 



Their feet, in liquid shackles bound, till death 



Bereave them of their worthless souls. " 



The earliest American poet of the wasp seems to have been 

 Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), signer of the Declaration of 

 Independence and treasurer of the American Philosophical 

 Society, who penned a poem of 32 lines in the form of a fable 

 entitled "The Wasp." 



Whittier has the following in the "Barefoot Boy": 



"Of the black-wasp's cunning way, 

 Mason of his walls of clay, 

 And the architectural plans 

 Of gray hornet artisans." 



but apart from this, little of interest is to be found regarding the 

 social wasps, or their wonderful organizations and beautiful 

 paper nests, although Erasmus Darwin also sings of them. Of 

 the Sphecoidea the poets are silent, nor indeed have they recog- 

 nized in any way the innumerable solitary wasps with their 

 interesting, predaceous habits and variety of architecture. 

 Erasmus Darwin in "The Origin of Society" has pointed the 

 way to still another opportunity in: 



"The wing'd Ichneumon for her embryon young 

 Gores with sharp horn the caterpillar throng, 

 The cruel larva mines its silky .course, 

 And tears the vitals of its fostering nurse." 



Here among the truly parasitic forms is a whole world as yet 

 unknown to poets, replete with tragedy and comedy, which in 

 some dim and distant day will furnish rhymsters with many a 

 pithy line. 



The ants, mentioned frequently by the early poets as the 

 "emmet" and sometimes by a less euphonious name, are cele- 

 brated in poetry as in prose, chiefly for their industry and provi- 



