THE BLACK REED-WASP 



Trypoxylon cinereohirtum, Cam 



WHERE man has felled the primitive forest, obliterat- 

 ing nature's labors of half a thousand years, he leaves 

 a wound that is long in healing. Just as a wound in 

 the flesh leaves a scar that stands out distinct from its 

 surroundings, so the forest heals its injury with a new vegetation, 

 distinct from itself, but a mask nevertheless to the ghastly wound 

 lying beneath. 



We call the mask second growth. It is made up of trumpet trees, 

 weakly shoots from fallen forest giants, great waves of razor-grass, 

 briars, various types of undergrowth and here and there a patch of 

 canes whose hollow stems are the natural nesting sites of the black 

 reed-wasps. 



Abandoning their natural habitat for the advantages afforded by 

 Kalacoon, 1 they flocked to our hospitable board, setting up their 

 abodes in our pen-holders, in spools, nail holes, in the handle of my 

 shaving glass, and, in fact, in anything that suggested a hollow tube 

 with a tiny diameter. 



To the general rule among Hymenoptera 2 the black reed-wasps 

 are an exception. That is to say, they are neither social, in the usual 

 community sense of the word, nor are they solitary. They came in 

 mated pairs in search of nesting sites, inspecting all the best holes 



*A laboratory in the jungles of British Guiana where the author encountered the 

 subject of this chapter. 



2 An order of insects including ants, bees, wasps, etc. 



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