NATURE'S CALENDAR 



209 



air of any of these warm September days 

 may be filled with shimmering hosts of the 

 winged forms in pursuit of the escaping 

 queens. This marriage flight over, the 

 females enter their formicaries and lay 

 the eggs which shall produce, next spring, 

 new colonies or replenish the old ; and all 

 the winged ants, having no further use 

 for their wings, pluck them off and settle 

 down to work in preparation for the win- 

 ter. 



It is not yet too late to study the habits 

 of many nest -storing wasps, which con- 

 tinue their summer work of provisioning 

 the cells in which their young are to hatch 

 far into the autumn. Read the admirable 

 and entertaining writings of Mr. George 

 W. and Mrs. Elizabeth G. Peckham as to 

 these habits, and learn how to observe 

 them. Common among the late summer 

 wasps are those of the genus Pelopceus, 

 which build nests of plain mud in shel- 

 tered places, and store them with various 

 sorts of spiders. These are stung for the 

 purpose of overcoming resistance, rather 

 than, as popularly believed, for the pur- 

 pose of paralyzing the victims for the 

 purpose of keeping them alive. You will 

 find upon examination of cells recently 

 provisioned that while most of the spiders 

 are dead, many of them are alive; these 

 living spiders die from day to day, the 

 death-rate depending upon the amount of 

 poison that has been injected into their 

 bodies. 



September 24 



September 25 



