1278 Rural School Leaflet 



a little nest of paper. She bites off bits of wood and chews them into 

 a pulp, and with this material she makes several cells and surrounds 

 them with a protectini^ envelope. She lays an egg in each cell; these 

 eggs hatch into little white grubs, which she feeds dutifully at first 

 with partially digested food from her own stomach and then with any 

 food that she happens to find which is acceptable to them. Thus they 

 gain their growth, and each spins a little veil over its cell, changes to 

 a pujDa, and later emerges as a full-grown worker ready for business. These 

 workers at once assume all the duties of the queen except that of laying 

 eggs. They enlarge the nest and feed the young and protect the nest from 

 enemies. 



Often one of these wasp nests will show several combs, one below the 

 other. They differ from the combs in a beehive in the following respects: 

 the}^ are made of paper instead of wax; the cells open only on the lower 

 side; they are not used for storing honey, but merely as cradles for the 

 young wasps. It is interesting to see one of these combs with each cell 

 filled to its utmost with a chubby little grub that has a head like a drop 

 of amber honey — a head that is always protruding from the cell in order 

 to attract the attention of the worker niu'scs when they bring in food. 

 One might suppose that, hanging head down, these legless creatures would 

 fall out of the nest ; but nature has pro\'ided each with a sticky disk at the 

 end of the body which holds it fast in the cell. 



Usually a yellow jacket's nest is inhabited for one year only. All 

 the inmates die off in the fall except a queen, which was developed late 

 in the fall. However, the writer has heard of one or two instances when a 

 clever young queen took advantage of the old nest and used it for a second 

 summer. 



Although wasps are fond of sweets, their chief food consists of insects, 

 and usually the insects that can best be spared, for they destroy many 

 flies, mosquitoes, and injurious caterpillars. 



the black cricket 



Anna Botsford Comstock 



The haunts of the cricket are usually sunny ; it digs a little cave beneath 

 a stone or a clod in some field, where, it can have the whole benefit of 

 all the sunshine when it issues from its door. The black cricket cannot 

 fly, since it has no wings under its wing covers as have the grasshoppers. 

 The hind legs have a strong femiu", and a short but strong tibia with 

 downward-slanting spines along the hind edge, which undoubtedly help 

 the insect in scrambling through the grass. At the end of the tibia, next 

 to the foot, is a rosette of five spines, the two longer ones slanting to 



