WASPS, SOCIAL AND SOLITARY 



full of energy that we stopped to watch them, and this 

 was our introduction to the study of these "bold sons of 

 air and heat," although a perusal of Fabre's fascinating 

 "Souvenirs Entomologiques " had prepared us to feel a 

 lively interest in them. We were at our summer home 

 near Milwaukee, where meadow and garden, with the 

 wooded island in the lake close by, offered themselves as 

 ■hunting grounds, while wasps of every kind, the social- 

 istic tribes as well as the extreme individualists of the 

 solitary species, were waiting to be studied. 



The Vespas that had aroused our interest received our 

 first attention, and a nest in the ground proved to be a most 

 convenient arrangement. Experiments that would have 

 been dangerous to hfe and limb had we tried them with 

 a paper nest hanging in the open, were easy here so long 

 as we kept calm and unflurried. Intent upon their own 

 affairs, and unsuspicious of evil, perhaps because they 

 knew themselves to be armed against aggression, they 

 accepted our presence, at first with indifference ; but as 

 we sat there day after day we must have become land- 

 marks to them, and perhaps before the summer was 

 over they considered us really a part of home. 



While poor humanity takes comfort in a mid-day 

 siesta, wasps love the heat of noontide, and with every 

 rise in temperature they fly faster, hum louder, and 



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