CHAPTER XI 



THE COMMON WASP (continued) 



/^F the calamities that befall the Wasp 

 ^^ when winter arrives, the worst remains 

 to be told. Foreseeing the approach of fail- 

 ing power, the neuters, hitherto the tenderest 

 of nurses, become savage exterminators: 



*' Let us leave no orphans," they say to 

 themselves; " no one would tend them after 

 we are gone. Let us kill everything, belated 

 eggs and larvae ahke. A violent end is 

 preferable to slow death by starvation." 



A massacre of the innocents ensues. 

 Seized by the scruff of the neck and brutally 

 extirpated from their cells, the larvae are 

 dragged out of the nest and thrown into the 

 vat at the bottom of the crypt; the eggs, those 

 delicate morsels, are ripped open and de- 

 voured. Will it be possible for me to wit- 

 ness this tragic end of the city, not in the 

 fulness of its horror — that ambition is too 

 far beyond my resources — but at least in 

 some of its scenes? Let us try. 



In October, I place under cover a few 

 fragments of a nest which have been saved 

 270 



