THE ANTS, BEES, AND WASPS 67 



has been disposed of. If no larvse are present, if, for 

 instance, the young worker is living in an inverted tum- 

 bler and has never seen a larva, the various stages of the 

 process are the same." The instinct does not appear in per- 

 fection at first, for the same author notices that it takes a 

 young worker about three times as long to feed the larvae as 

 the female requires, and that a great deal of time is lost by 

 the new worker " in poking its head into the wrong cells 

 and running unnecessarily about over the face of the nest." 



FIG. 41. Paper-Making Wasp and Nest. Natural size 



The workers surely do not appreciate the character of their 

 task, for the observer just quoted has seen a young worker 

 gnaw a piece out of the body of a dead larva and offer it as 

 food to the mouth of the same larva; and, she continues, 

 " I once observed a neuter attack a live larva, and after she 

 had cut out and crushed a fair-sized piece of its body, come 

 back eight times in the course of her examination of the 

 cells of the nest, to this larva, which naturally had died in 

 the operation, and offer it this part of its own body, with the 

 evident expectation that it would be seized and eaten. .The 

 eighth time she dropped the piece on the face of the dead 

 larva and went away with an air of ' duty well done ' which 

 was comical to behold." 



