342 HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packaud. 



But nature has prohibited them from rearing offspring of 

 their own. They feed the 3-oung, and watch over them 

 until a new brood api)ears late in the summer. The famil}' 

 circle is now completed. A few females and males appear, 

 and linger on until the early frosts of autumn kill the latter, 

 when their wives take shelter under leaves or in cracks 

 under the bai-k of trees, there to await the warmer days of 

 spring. 



The paper making wasps, various species of Vespa, as 

 soon as a tier of cells is- partially built, begin to build out a 



wall of paper from near the 

 base of the pedicel. This grows 

 more and more as the cells 

 iucrease in number ; when, 

 arranged in several tiers sup- 

 ported by pedicels, they are 

 completely walled in by the 

 intelligent wasps. The nests 

 of the common wasp which 



Vespa maciilata. 



builds about houses are seldom 

 larger than one's fist, but the nests of the Vespa maculata 

 (Fig. 254) are twice as large as one's head. 



All wasps are not makers of paper. The oriental wasp 

 {^Vespa orientalis) builds its cells of cla}', and according to 

 Waterhouse, "the work is exceedingly beautiful and true." 

 Another species, saj's Mr. Frederic Smith, of the British 

 Museum, "makes its nest of sandy loam, the exterior being 

 so hard that a saw used in opening one of its sides was 

 blunted." 



Among the social wasps there are two series, and it is 

 difficult to say which is the higher ; in fact, the Hymenoptera 

 as a group may be compared to a tree, the topmost branches, 

 no one more preeminent than the others, representing the 

 social species. The ants are fully as intelligent, their social 

 life as fully, if not more, complex than that of the wasps or 



22 



