i68 ROMANCE OF THE INSECT WORLD CHAP. 



of insect architecture. As with the bees, the great 

 object of their industry is the safety and upbringing 

 of their beloved young, and in like manner they 

 construct combs for their reception, consisting nearly 

 always of hexagonal cells. The building material 

 they employ, however, is totally dissimilar to wax, 

 and the plan of their city differs from that of the 

 hive. These nests show many discrepancies, and 

 their situations vary; but though they are heteroge- 

 neous in detail, in the essential and most important 

 points they are all alike. 



The common English Wasp (Vespa vulgaris) 

 is a handsome insect, much disliked for its fond- 

 ness for everything sweet and its formidable 

 weapon of defence. The gardener especially holds 

 it in abhorrence, on account of its depredations on 

 fine ripe fruit. Still it is more a predacious than a 

 vegetable feeder, and the evil it commits in respect 

 of the peaches, and so on, is perhaps more than 

 counterbalanced by its good works in ridding us of 

 many a tiresome fly and similar pest. Usually situ- 

 ated in a cavity underground, the nest is a marvel of 

 ingenious industry. Of more or less globular shape, 

 and about sixteen to eighteen inches long by twelve 

 or thirteen broad, it is inclosed in a coating of 

 material some half an inch thick, like coarse brown 

 paper, though not so tough, made up of numerous 

 thin leaves or laminae, which do not touch but have 

 small intervals between them, and is evidently in- 

 tended to prevent the earth from getting among the 

 combs inside. If this external portion is removed 

 the combs are exposed, generally from twelve to 



