60 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



female who has survived the winter, to the rigours of which 

 all her summer associates of males and working wasps 

 uniformly fall victims. Nay, out of three hundred females 

 which may be found in one vespiary, or wasp's nest, towards 

 the close of autumn, scarcely ten or a dozen survive till 

 the ensuing spring, at which season they awake from their 

 hybernal lethargy, and begin with ardour the labours of 

 colonization. 



It may be interesting to follow one of these mother 

 wasps through her several operations, in which she merits 

 more the praise of industr}^ than the queen of a bee-hive, 

 who does nothing, and never moves without a numerous 

 train of obedient retainers, always ready to execute her 

 commands and to do her homage. The mother wasp, on the 

 contrary, is at first alone, and is obliged to perform every 

 species of drudgery herself. 



Her first care, after being roused to activity by the re- 

 turning warmth of the season, is to discover a place suitable 

 for her intended colony ; and, accordingly, in the spring, 

 wasps may be seen prying into every hole of a hedge-bank, 

 particularly where field-mice have burrowed. Some authors 

 report that she is partial to the forsaken galleries of the 

 mole ; but this does not accord with our observations, as we 

 have never met with a single vespiary in any situation 

 likely to have been frequented by moles. But though we 

 cannot assert the fact, 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 veiy much 

 narrowed. 



The desire of the wasp to save herself the labour of 

 excavation, by forming her nest where other animals have 

 burrowed, is not without a j)arallel in the actions of quad- 

 rupeds, and even of birds. In the splendid continuation of 

 Wilson's American Ornithology, by Charles L. Bonaparte 

 (whose scientific pursuits have thrown round that name a 



