SOCIAL WASPS AND HORNTAILS 67 



posthumous, and even yet his widow is no more than 

 an expectant mother. As she issues from her winter 

 retreat, the responsibilities of life crowd thick upon 

 her; she finds herself without a home, without a 

 helper ; and yet in a few short weeks she will be sur- 

 rounded, in a commodious retreat, with hundreds of 

 her own species, she herself not only their mother, but 

 also their queen. She has no thought of returning to 

 the old home which was the scene of her youth ; that 

 has long since been dismantled, and what with winter 

 rains, and the invasion of earwigs, woodlice, and other 

 such barbaric hordes, few traces of it now remain. So, 

 like her mother before her, she has to undertake pioneer 

 life, and to make a clearing for her future colony. 

 Fortunate is she if she can find some hole a deserted 

 mouse-burrow, or other tiny cavern ready to hand; 

 much labour of excavating will thus be saved, and she 

 may begin at once to form the nest. But should nature 

 not thus favour her, she must herself set to work, and by 

 repeated attacks upon the virgin soil with her powerful 

 jaws, gradually hollow out a cavern to her mind. 



She will then repair to some oaken fence, or row of 

 palings, and with those same useful tools that she always 

 carries with her, and that have just done such good 

 service as excavators, she will snip off particles of wood, 

 clinging to the fence all the while, gradually working 

 her way along the paling, and leaving behind her a 

 pale streak where the thin outer layer of weather- 

 stained wood has been removed. With a bundle of 

 woody fibres thus collected, she flies away home, and 

 working them up into a pulp with a secretion from 

 her own mouth, plasters them out into a greyish 

 material that looks something like crumpled tissue 

 paper. This is first formed into a kind of stalk, 



