50 TIIE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



see a beautiful provision Providence has made for the perpetuity of what we 

 look upon as an insignificant wasp. It has been provided with instinct to 

 guide her; indeed, it appears to me that she has a kind of understanding 

 that her progeny are to be brought forth gradually, therefore she ouly depo- 

 sits a single egg at a time, when a lapse of a day or more occurs between 

 each, which is no doubt caused in order that her labor in the collecting of 

 food (for they are ravenous eaters in their larval state) may be brought about 

 with greater facility, or, correctly speaking, that the time for procuring food 

 and watching the nest will be equally divided. She is therefore only com- 

 pelled to feed two at a time; and by the period of the issue of larvae from 

 advanced eggs, the first two have ceased to feed and are no more trouble to 

 her, as they are prepared to spin cocoons to enclose themselves in their cells 

 to uudergo the third stage of their life. The parent wasp has also the accu- 

 racy and knowledge of a bird in regard to the locality of its nest: indeed, 

 the attachment is as great, and which is not abandoned until it is deserted 

 by her progeny to construct the second. I have had the pleasure of watch- 

 ing the formation of the parent nests of Vespa. metadata and germanica 

 from the time they were commenced until completion, and I now record a 

 difference in their mode of working from the European V. vulgaris or its 

 American representative, i. e., that the pedicel and the tier of cells are the 

 last portions of the work finished. In some rare examples, the inner dome 

 and part of the second exterior envelope are not fully completed when the 

 pedicel and tier of cells is attached to the roof; but there may be a force of 

 nature in these deviations from the general plan of architecture, which I am 

 not prepared to solve. Kirby says: "That the common wasp of Europe ( Vespa 

 vulgaris, Linn.) only partially completes the dome before the uppermost tier 

 of cells are begun, and when the first tier is finished, the continuation of 

 the rouf or walls of the building is brought down lower; a new tier of cells 

 is erected, and this work successively proceeds until the whole is finished." — 

 Introduction to Entomology, Yol. I., p. 504-5. The first and second nests of 

 V. maculata and germanica, with the exception of the rare specimens before 

 mentioned, are not formed in this manner, for all those which I have exam- 

 ined had their exterior covering and the aperture fully formed before the first 

 or second tiers of cells were commenced, [n order to conl.rm my former 

 statement that the parent nest is abandoned by the first issue of wasps, and 

 that it is not enlarged, as many people suppose, one of these little nests was 

 found occupying the full extent of a cavity in an old tree stump. It con- 

 tained a single tier of eighteen perfect cells, which I believe is the maximum 

 number of the parent nest. They are found from one and a-half to three 

 inches in diameter, and contain from one to four partitions or envelopes. 

 These distinctions may be attributed to the bulk and strength of the parent 



