THE BROWNIE-JUGS AND THE BROWNIE 47 



I have seen many a jug catalogued in a bric-a-brac 

 sale that did not have nearly so interesting a history as 

 one of these clay pots of the vase -maker wasp. It is 

 made of sand and yellow mud. When completed, the 

 wasp lays an egg within it, and then proceeds to pack 

 it full of tiny green caterpillars, each of which she has 

 paralyzed, though not killed, by a stab of her sting. 

 The opening of the vase is then plugged up with a 

 mud cork. Presently the egg hatches into a little grub, 

 that feeds for the rest of its days on the living store 

 of food. 



By the time the supply has run short, the grub has 

 become a chrysalis, and soon pushes out the plug, and 

 appears a full-grown wasp, like its parent, and it will 

 make as pretty a jug as the one it leaves the first time 

 it tries. 



