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HISTOaV OK 



tue young worms, which a little before they fed and protected 

 with so much assiduity, are now butchered, and dragged from 

 their cells. As the cold increases, they no longer find sufficient 

 warmth in their nests, which grow hateful to them, and they 

 fly to seek it in the corners of houses, and places that receive an 

 artificial heat. But the winter is still insupportable j and be- 

 fore the new year begins, they wither and die ; the working- wasps 

 first, the males soon following, and many of the females suffer 

 in the general calamity. In every nest, however, one or two 

 females survive the winter, and having been impregnated by the 

 male during the preceditig season, she begins in spring to lay her 

 eggs in a little hole of her own contrivance. This bundle of 

 eggs, which is clustered together like grapes, soon produces two 

 worms, which the female takes proper precaution to defend and 

 supply, and these, when hatched, soon give assistance to the 

 female, who is employed in hatching two more ; these also 

 gathering strength, extricate themselves out of the web that 

 enclosed them, and become likewise assistants to their mother ; 

 nfteen days after, two more make their appearance ; thus is the 

 community every day increasing, while the female lays in every 

 cell, first a male and then a female. These soon after become 

 breeders in turn, till, from a single female, ten thousand wasps 

 are seen produced before the month of June. After the female 

 has thus produced her progeny, which are distributed in different 

 districts, they assemble from all parts in the middle of summer, 

 and provide for themselves the large and commodious habita- 

 tion which has been described above. • 



* " One of the most remarkable of our native social wasps is the Vespci 

 Britannica, or tree-wasp, which is not uncommon in the norther;>, but sel- 

 dom to be met with in the southern parts of the island. Instead of burrow, 

 ing in the ground like the common wasp, or in the hollows of trees like the 

 hornet, it bo dly swings its nest from the extremity of a branch, where it 

 exhibits some resemblance, in size and colour, to a Welsh wig, hung out to 

 dry. We have seen more than one of these nests on the same tree, at 

 Catrine, in Ayrshire, and at Wemyss Bay, in Renfrewshire. The tree 

 which the Britannic wasp prefers is the silver fir, whose broad flat branch 

 serves as a protection to the suspended nest both from the sun and the rain. 

 The materials and structure are nearly the same a-s those employed by the 

 common wasp, and which we have already described. 



" A singular nest of a species of wasp is figured by Reaumur, but is ap. 

 parenlly rare in this country, a.s Kirby and Spence mention only a single 

 oest of a similar construction, found in a garden at Eact-Dale TIu.5 nest 



