The Mason-Wasps 



motherhood has not saved them. Even as 

 the feeble males retired from business, even 

 as the workers exhausted by labour, they too 

 have succumbed. 



We must not blame their internment un- 

 der wire for their death. The same thing 

 happens in the open country. The various 

 nests inspected at the end of December all 

 reveal a similar mortality. The females die 

 almost as rapidly as the rest of the popula- 

 tion. 



This was to be expected. The number of 

 females who are daughters of the same nest 

 is unknown to me. However, the profusion 

 of their dead bodies in the charnel-pit of the 

 colony tells me that they must be counted by 

 the hundred, perhaps by the thousand. One 

 female is enough to found a city of thirty 

 thousand inhabitants. If all were to pro- 

 sper, what a scourge! The Wasps would 

 tyrannize over the country-side. 



The order of things demands that the vast 

 majority shall die, killed not by an accidental 

 epidemic and the inclemency of the season, 

 but by an inevitable destiny, which performs 

 its work of destruction with the same en- 

 ergy as that which it displays in the task 

 of procreation. One question thereupon 

 arises: since a single female, preserved in 

 268 



