214 THE WOODLANDS. 



practically there are but two social wasps which are 

 arboreal in their habits. These construct nests upon 

 a similar plan, and with a like material, which is 

 manipulated with care and ingenuity. 



Wasp-paper, or the substance of which the nests 

 are composed, is made up of various substances ; 

 such as fragments of wood or bark, paper-cuttings, 

 vegetable filaments, &c. To a certain extent the 

 cohesion of these filaments is mechanical, for a kind 

 of felting or interlacing may be traced ; but the 

 materials are for the most part held together by the 

 mucous secretion with which they are worked up 

 into pulp. Wasps may be watched at a row of 

 palings on a summer morning scraping off fibrils with 

 which to construct their nests, forming them into 

 pellets, and conveying them to the place where the 

 nest is being constructed. Dr. Ormerod says that 

 when a wasp comes home laden with the building 

 materials, she does not immediately apply them, but 

 enters the nest, and then, after about half a minute, 

 she emerges and sets to work. Mounted astride on 

 the edge of one of the covering sheets, she presses 

 her pellet firmly down with her forelegs till it adheres 

 to the edge, and, walking backwards, continues the 

 same process of pressing and kneading till the pellet 

 is used up, and her track is marked by a short, dark 

 cord lying along the thin edge to which she has 

 fastened it. Then she runs forwards, and as she 

 returns again backwards over the same ground, 

 she draws the cord through her mandibles, repeating 

 this process two or three times till it is flattened out 

 into a little strip or ribbon of paper, which only needs 



