8 THE RING OF NATURE 



day of the new year. The space between the walls 

 is stuffed with moss by the bygone builder, and 

 the moss may be said to be almost stuffed with 

 queen wasps that tucked themselves away there 

 when the summer failed. Six of them lie before me 

 on the writing-table, an apparent row of corpses, 

 their limbs so stiff that they would break if you 

 tried too resolutely to bend them, their grim, 

 yellow jaws tense and dry, and no sign of life any- 

 where about them. But I know that if I put them 

 a little nearer the fire those dead limbs would stir, 

 the antennae would feel about with an expression 

 of ' Where am I ? ' and in time the wings would 

 whirr, and the black-and-yellow machine become 

 once more alive and hungry. A very little sun in 

 the new year suffices to wake a wasp here and 

 there, though it is doubtful whether they can as 

 easily get to sleep again, and I think the untimely 

 wasps must mostly perish. The humble-bees are 

 more exact in their waking, and do not come 

 abroad until there is a reasonable prospect of a 

 very industrious insect making some sort of a 

 living. We rarely come across their hibernaculum, 

 though I have been told that they can be found in 

 dry turf stacks. I fancy they creep in under the 

 roots of thyme where it grows on a porous bed of 

 rubbly limestone, and no doubt there are many in 

 hollow trees. The shrew-mice will have a good 

 chance of coming across hibernating humble-bees 

 in their rambles about the earth caves of the hedge- 

 row, though they will not eat so rich as when their 



