66 INSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



calculates that one vespiary may produce every year more 

 than 30,000 wasps, reckoning only 10,000 cells, and each 

 serving successively for the cradle of three generations- 

 But, although the whole structure is built at the expense of 

 so much labour and ingenuity, it has scarcely been finished 

 before the winter sets in, when it becomes nearly useless, 

 and serves only for the abode of a few benumbed females, 

 who abandon it on the approach of spring, and never 



A, represents one of the rods from which the terraces are suspended. B, a portion of the 

 external crust. 



return ; for wasps do not, like mason-bees, ever make use 

 of the same nest for more than one season. 



Both Eeaumur and the younger Huber studied the 

 proceedings of the common wasp in the manner which 

 has been so successful in observing bees — by means of 

 glazed hives, and other contrivances. In this, these na- 

 turalists were greatly aided by the extreme affection of 

 wasps for their young ; for though their nest is carried 

 off, or even cut in various directions, and exposed to the 

 light, they never desert it, nor relax their attention to 

 their progeny. When a wasp's nest is removed from its 

 natural situation, and covered with a glass hive, the first 

 operation of the inhabitants is to i^epair the injuries it has 

 suffered. They carry off with surprising activity all the 

 earth or other matters which have fallen by accident into 

 the nest; and when they have got it thoroughly cleared 

 of everything extraneous, they begin to secure it from 

 further derangement, by fixing it to the glass with 

 papyraceous columns, similar to those which we have 

 already described. The breaches which the nest may have 

 suffered are then repaired, and the thickness of the walls is 



