122 WASP STUDIES AFIELD 



attached. Since this root was so small, it must have re- 

 quired a great deal of deftness on the part of the mother 

 to attach her first cell to it; of course with this one well 

 anchored for a foundation it was easy to build the others. 

 But if this sort of site was generally used by primitive 

 caementarium and this undoubtedly must have been neces- 

 sary before people provided them with barns and shed- 

 roofs then we think, in those days of pioneering, a deal 

 more of ingenuity was necessary than in the life of ease and 

 convenience of today. Campers had built fires in the hole 

 under the roots of the tree, and the smoke had blackened the 

 nest, but this did not affect the contents of the cells. 



On another occasion we found a four-celled nest hanging 

 to a thread-like vine which grew into the shed through a 

 crack in the wall. Despite the fact that there was hundreds 

 of feet of board surface upon which this wasp could have 

 built, it chose this frail vine. These facts, together with 

 the fact that these nests have often been found plastered to 

 nails protruding from the walls, on umbrella ribs, corn- 

 husks and other unlikely places, suggest that probably the 

 primitive instinct was to build in such places. 



At Lake View, Kansas, a fine, large nest was being built 

 on the outside of a schoolhouse. It was structurally com- 

 plete but the mother was busy daubing mud all over it to 

 strengthen it. In taking it down it became slightly broken, 

 so we left it. The next day the mother had plastered 

 mud all over the broken parts. Some would say : "A wise 

 mother!"; but in this case there was, we believe, no wisdom 

 or intelligence at all ; she was daubing mud all over the nest 

 at the time when the accident happened; hence nothing is 

 more natural than that she should continue to spread mud 

 all over the broken places as well. In our opinion it would 

 have shown real intelligence if she would or could have 

 interrupted her momentum of spreading mud all over the 



