THE PAPER WASP AND HIS DOINGS 93 
asked to move ; for what good is it tew murder 
99 hornets an' have the one hundred one hit you 
with his javelin ! I kan't tell you just tew a day 
how long a hornet kan live, but I kno from expe- 
rience that every bug, be he hornet or somebody 
else who is mad all the time, an' stings every 
chance he kan git, generally outlives all ov his 
nabors." 
An artistically constructed paragraph, with a 
" snapper " at the end of it, or rather a " sharp 
konklusion " quite consistent with its subject. 
" Mad all the time," he says, and " stings every 
chance he can git," and such would seem to be 
the unanimous belief. Indeed, the phrase " As 
mad as a hornet " has passed into a proverb, which 
presumably dates back to the Aryans, or at least 
from the scriptural allusion of the providential 
visitation of hornets, which routed the impious in- 
habitants of Canaan before the conquering Israel- 
ites. The ancient Greeks and Latins are on rec- 
ord in their appreciation of the " warlike hornet," 
and considered that it came rightly by its valor 
as an inheritance from the dead war-horse from 
whose carcass the insects were supposed to be 
spontaneously generated. 
" The warlike horse if buried underground 
Shortly a brood of hornets will be found," 
writes Ovid. Another author, Cardanus, thought 
