218 INSECTS. 



suffering, and the parents and nurses die the most 

 enviable of deaths, leaving none to miss them, and no 

 work unfinished. 



It is a well-known .fact that the female insects in many 

 orders are extremely tenacious of life until they have 

 fulfilled their appointed work of continuing the race. 

 Thus the life of a Moth or Butterfly, which under 

 ordinary circumstances would terminate in a few months, 

 may, if that be hindered, be prolonged to two or even 

 three years. To this law it is perhaps owing that a few 

 of the late hatched female Wasps survive the cold which 

 destroys the rest of the community, and are thus ready 

 at the return of spring to lay the foundation of a new 

 nest. Let then the whole race of Wasp-haters bear this 

 in mind. The single Wasp which trusts to the deceitful 

 courtesy of one mild day in December or January to 

 venture into our sight, will, before autumn, be the 

 mother of some thirty thousand. She crawls forth half 

 starved, half frozen, to claim from you perhaps the hun- 

 dredth of a grain of one of your lumps of sugar. If 

 you must murder Wasps, murder her, and fulfil the desire 

 of a Nero at one blow you have slain the thousands of a 

 city. But when summer comes refrain from the useless 

 cruelty of taking life after life from the joyous, busy 

 little creatures whom you may kill by thousands without 

 making the slightest perceptible difference in their 

 numbers, although with every little victim one happy life 

 has been quenched. If the preservation of fruit trees 

 is the object in this random, useless warfare, the object 

 will be better attained by placing more attractive food in 

 the neighbourhood of the fruit. If their "nasty sting'' 

 is the objection to them, make but two calculations. 

 First, inquire of half a dozen septuagenarian friends 



