236 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



digging in sandy places ; while others are known as mud-daubers, because 

 they make little mud-cells, more or less like those shown in the centre of the 

 figure, each of which is charged with an egg and provision for the young ; 

 and the forms which excavate their burrows in wood are commonly known 

 .as wood-wasps. It is not to be understood that all these forms store up 



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s mm 

 < If 



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Fig. 224. — The life of wasps. At the left, a large wasp is stinging a spider ; at the right, the larva of 

 another wasp is feeding upon a spider, which has been paralyzed by a sting. 



spiders as food for their young ; each species has its own favorite, and 

 some take flies, others caterpillars ; and so on through almost the whole 

 catalogue of insects. 



With the social wasps we again take up forms which live in communi- 

 ties, and whose habits, so far as we know them, are as interesting as those 



of the ants or the honey-bees. But our knowl- 

 edge on these points is somewhat limited, for the 

 investigation is not an easy one, since each indi- 

 vidual is armed with a sting, the merits and 

 capacities of which are familiar to all. Bees 

 will allow one to come around them without 

 manifesting any especial alarm, but a wasp or a 

 hornet is about as irritable as an insect well 

 can be. 



As with all social insects, there are males, females, and workers among 

 the wasps, and the nests are adapted for communal life. These nests are 

 familiar to all, hanging from the timbers of a barn, or the branches of a 

 tree in the forest ; they are large oval structures, built of paper, and hav- 

 ing the entrance below. Long before the introduction of wood-pulp, the 

 wasps knew how to make paper from wood. On the warm clays of spring 



Fig. 225. 



■ White-faced wasp ( Vespa 

 maculata). 



