362 
CLASS VIII. 
In bees we saw a monarchy with a queen at the head ; here the form of 
government is a republic, the members of which are supported less by their 
own industry than by rapine. Wasps are freebooters ; they are very eager 
for the juice of fruits; they suck the fluid that adheres to meat in 
slaughter-houses, cut pieces off, rob bees of their honey and murder them, 
as well as other insects, not for their own use, but to feed their larve with 
them. This robber-state, however numerous its citizens may be, owes its 
origin to a single mother. She is fertilised in the autumn, and lives over 
the winter, whilst the neuters and males die, and in the spring commences 
the work alone. After a while she is assisted by sexless wasps which are 
her first-born children. In autumn males and females are born. At that 
time some hundreds of the last are often found in a single nest, dwelling 
in uninterrupted peace, whilst amongst bees only two or three females 
are able to be of one mind together, for a short time. The working wasps 
are smaller than the rest ; they all die from the cold of winter. 
Comp. Réaumur, Mém. s. l. Ins. vi. Mém. vi. vit; Bonnet, Contempla- 
tion' de la Nature, Xi. partie, chaps. 23—25; CMuvres d’Hist. Nat. et de 
Philos. Tom. 1x. 8vo, pp. 99—100; Kirpy and SpENcE, Introd. to Ento- 
mol. II. pp. 107—I12. 
Polistes Latr. Clypeus produced anteriorly into a sharp tooth. 
Abdomen in some adhering to the thorax by a long petiole. 
Sp. Vespa nidulans Fasr., Epipone chartaria LATR., Hist. nat. des Crust. et 
des Ins. x111. Tab. 102, f. 6; Guerin, Jeonogr. Ins. Pl. 72, fig. 7. This 
South-American species makes very large nests, as though of pasteboard, 
hung to a branch of a tree, like long sacks with a conical lower end, with 
an opening in the middle. The cells are attached to different transverse 
partitions, which are perforated in the middle ; this is the Guépe cartonniére 
of Reaumur, Jns. vi. Mém. vit. p. 224, &e. Pl. 2o—24, &c. To this division 
also belongs the honey-gathering wasp of the Brazils, named Lecheguana ; 
see LATREILLE, Mém. du Muséum, Xi. pp. 313—320, and another species 
which A. WHITE names Myropetra scutellaris, whose nest differs from that 
of Vespa nidulans by the conical knobs with which it is beset externally. 
Ann. of nat. Hist. vil. 1841, pp. 315—322. 
To the division Polistes belong some European wasps whose nest has no 
common covering, the cells lying bare. SwAMMERDAM, Bijbel der Nat. 
Tab. 26, fig. 15 ; RoEsEL, Jns. 11. Bomb. et Vesp. Tab. vil. 
Vespa Latr. Clypeus truncated anteriorly, emarginate. 
Sp. Vespa crabro L., Réaumur, Jns. vi. Pl. xvit.'—Vespa vulgaris L., 
Reaum. zbed. Pl. xiv. figs. :—7, Panzer, Deutschl. Ins., Heft 49, Tab. 
19, &e. 
1 That this insect, the largest and most voracious wasp of Europe, may be to some 
extent tamed, and then is not to be feared, appears from the observations of P. W. J. 
MUELLER; see his amusingly written paper in GERMAR und LINcKEN, Magazin 
der Entomologie, 111. 1818, s. 5|6—68. 
