55^ Marvels of Insect Life. 



Cardboard- Wasps. 



The social wasps with which we are acquainted in this country protect their 

 many tiers of brood cehs by building a bag of several layers of fragile paper, made 

 from wood-pulp prepared by their own jaws. In Tropical iVmerica there is a wasp ^ 

 that builds with a view to the society being continued year after year. It has 

 therefore improved upon the flimsy paper bag that needs constant strengthening 

 by means of additional layers of paper on the outside. Our paper-making wasps 

 have a lease on one life only — the queen's — and they build accordingly ; but the 

 cardboard workers build as though they had a freehold and the house was to serve 

 for successive generations. They still use wood-pulp for their material, but it is 

 more linely divided and mixed with a greater proportion of their own saliva. Paper 

 is not the word for this material. It is thick, tough, solid, with a smooth hnished 

 surface upon which one could write with pen and ink ; and the term papier mache 

 is much more suitable for it. 



A tolerably well-known example of this type is the Dutchman's pipe nest of 

 a slim-waisted wasp, which as it hangs from a branch is more suggestive of a bell 



than a pipe. The pipe-shape is produced by 

 exhibiting it inverted, with a length of the branch 

 to which it is attached by its builders to form the 

 pipe-stem. The style of its architecture is, like 

 that of our native wasps' nests, of an ingenious 

 character, since it allows of increase from small 

 beginnings up to any size that may be required 

 A Honey-Wasp. by the growth of the community, without depart- 



Certain waspiof Tropical Amcricahavc the remark- • r xi i • • 4-l,„ 



able habit of storing honey in their cells as some nig Irom thc plan or m any way maimig the 



Dt the bees do. Their nests are of enormous size. , ,••, -i „jj. 



The species whose photograph is pivcn above is the Symmetry, as sometmics happens when man adds 



builder of thc nest shown ou the page opposite. • ,i j j-^- j. i • i. 1 „t,„J^ 



It is only half this size. wmgs OT othcr additions to his ancestral abode. 



The combs in this case are attached by their edges to the firm walls, and 

 all have a curve which makes the upper side concave and the lower side 

 convex. It is to the lower side that the cells are attached so that their 

 mouths open downwards, just as in the comb of the common wasp. The 

 broad end of this bell-shaped nest is of the same solid material as the side 

 walls, and has an entrance hole in its centre. A corresponding hole is in the centre of 

 each comb, and permits passage to and from the successive floors ; for there is no 

 means of getting round between the wall and the edge of the comb as in the nests 

 we know most intimately. When the increase of the population makes an increase 

 of cell-accommodation necessary the pasteboard-wasp extends the side walls at 

 the mouth of the bell and builds a new sheet of pasteboard across. The former 

 lower wall is then used as the base of a new comb, a new set of cells being constructed 

 over its lower face. It will be seen that by this method of construction there is 

 no waste of labour, such as is involved in the nests of our common wasps, where 

 the outer layers of the walls have to be constantly renewed as the inner layers 

 are cut away to allow of the addition of new cells to the circumference of existing 

 combs. Another point in this method of building worth notice is that the floors 



'■ Cliaitcruus cluirtariiis. 



