HYMENOPTERA. 



3;r 



the females or the workers knead up with their mandibles and their 

 legs before presenting to their nurslings, very nearly in the same way 

 as birds give their beak full of food to their little ones. At the end 

 of three weeks the larvae cease to take food, and begin to shut 

 themselves up in their cells, the interior of which they line with 

 a coating of silk. In this they change their form, and assume the 

 appearance of the perfect insect, with its six legs and 

 its wings, but motionless, and contracted together. A 

 sort of bag keeps all the organs swathed up together 

 (Fig. 349). This pupa state lasts for eight or nine days, 

 at the end of which time the insect is fully developed ; 

 it casts its skin, breaks the door of its prison, and 

 launches itself into the air. A cell is no sooner aban- 

 doned than a worker visits, cleans it, and puts it in a fit p^p^ ^J^f^e 

 state to receive another egg. common wasp. 



During the summer the female wasp remains con- 

 stantly in the nest, absorbed with family cares. She is occupied in 

 laying eggs and in feeding her progeny, with the active assistance 

 of the workers, or mules, as Reaumur and Charles de Geer call them, 

 because they are unfruitful. 



In the interior of the nests you generally find the most perfectly 

 good understanding existing, and the most perfect order, in spite of 

 the warlike instincts of these insects. It is only on rare occasions 

 that this domestic peace is disturbed by the quarrels of male with 

 male or worker with worker ; but these combats are not deadly. 

 Never, moreover, has one nest of wasps been known to declare war 

 against another for the purpose of robbing it. " The government of 

 wasps," says M. Victor Rendu, " explains very well the gentleness of 

 their public conduct. Amongst them there are no despots ; no one 

 either reigns or governs ; each one lives at liberty in a free city, on 

 the sole condition of never being a burden to the state. They all act 

 in concert, without privileges or monopolies, under the influence of a 

 common law — the great law of the public good, from which no one is 

 exempted.'"'^ 



But this model republic is fatally doomed to early destruction. 

 At the approach of winter all the workers, as also the males, perish. 

 Some pregnant females alone hold out against the- cold, and get 

 through the winter, to propagate and perpetuate their species. 

 Before dying, these insects destroy all the larvae which are not 

 hatched at the first approach of cold weather. In spring the females 



* "L'Intelligencedes Betes." In i8mo. Paris, 1864. 



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