Social-Wasps. 81 



female who has survived the winter, to the rigours of which 

 all her summer associates of males and working wasps 

 uniformly fall victims. Nay, out of three hundred females 

 which may be found in one vespiary, or wasp's nest, towards 

 the close of autumn, scarcely ten or a dozen survive till 

 the ensuing spring, at which season they awake from their 

 hybernal lethargy, and begin with ardour the labours of 

 colonization. 



It may be interesting to follow one of these mother wasps 

 through her several operations, in which she merits more the 

 praise of industry than the queen of a bee-hive, who does 

 nothing, and never moves without a numerous train of 

 obedient retainers, always ready to execute her commands 

 and to do her homage. The mother wasp, on the contrary, 

 is at first alone, and is obliged to perform every species of 

 drudgery herself. 



Her first care, after being roused to activity by the return- 

 ing warmth of the season, is to discover a place suitable for 

 her intended colony ; and, accordingly, in the spring, wasps 

 may be seen prying into every hole of a hedge-bank, par- 

 ticularly where field-mice have burrowed. Some authors 

 report that she is partial to the forsaken galleries of the 

 mole ; but this does not accord with our observations, as we 

 have never met with a single vespiary in any situation 

 likely to have been frequented by moles. But though we 

 cannot assert the fact, we think it highly probable that the 

 deserted nest of the field-mouse, which is not uncommon in 

 hedge-banks, may be sometimes appropriated by a mother 

 wasp as an excavation convenient for her purpose. Yet, 

 if she does make choice of the burrow of a field-mouse, it 

 requires to be afterwards considerably enlarged in the 

 interior chamber, and the entrance gallery very much 

 narrowed. 



The desire of the wasp to save herself the labour of 

 excavation, by forming her nest where other animals have 

 burrowed, is not without a parallel in the actions of quad- 

 rupeds, and even of birds. In the splendid continuation of 

 Wilson's American Ornithology, by Charles L. Bonaparte 



