72 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



But though we cannot assert the lact, we think it 

 highly probable that the deserted nest of the field- 

 mouse, which is not uncommon in hedge banks, may 

 be sometimes appropriated by a mother wasp as an 

 excavation convenient for her purpose. Yet, if she 

 does make choice of the burrow of a field-mouse, it 

 requires to be afterwards considerably enlarged in 

 the interior chamber, and the entrance gallery very 

 much narrowed. 



The desire of the v»acp to save herself the labour 

 of excavation, by forming her nest v/here other ani- 

 mals have burrowed, is not without a parallel in the 

 actions of quadrupeds, and even of birds. In the 

 splendid continuation of Wilson's American Orni- 

 thology, by Charles L. Bonaparte (whose scientific 

 pursuits have thrown around that name a beneficent 

 lustre, pleasingly contrasted with his uncle's glory), 

 there is an interesting example of this instinctive 

 adoption of the labours of others. " In the trans- 

 Mississippian territories of the United States, the 

 burrowing-owl resides exclusively in the villages 

 of the marmot, or prairie dog, whose excavations 

 are so commodious, as to render it unnecessary 

 that the owl should dig for himself, as he is 

 said to do where no burrowing animals exist.* 

 The villages of the prairie dog are very nume- 

 rous and variable in their extent, — sometimes 

 covering only a few acres, and at others spreading 

 over the surface of the country for miles together. 

 They are composed of slightly elevated mounds, 

 having the form of a truncated cone, about two feet 

 in width at the base, and seldom rising as high as 

 eighteen inches from the surface of the soil. The 



$ 



* The owl observed by V ieiiiol in Jrt Domingo digs itself a 

 burrow two feet in deptli, at the bottom of which it deposits 

 its eggs npoa a bed of moss. 



