Social-Wasps. 91 



that one vespiary may produce every year more than 30.000 

 wasps, reckoning only 10,000 cells, and each serving succes- 

 sively for the cradle of three generations. But, although 

 the whole structure is built at the expense of so much labour 

 and ingenuity, it has scarcely been finished before the winter 

 sets in, when it becomes nearly useless, and serves only for 

 the abode of a few benumbed females, who abandon it on the 



A, represents one of the rods from which the terraces are suspended. B, a poition of the 

 external crust. 



approach of spring, and never return ; for wasps do not, like 

 mason-bees, ever make use of the same nest for more than 

 one season. 



Both Reaumur and the younger Huber studied the pro- 

 ceedings of the common wasp in the manner which has been 

 so successful in observing bees by means of glazed hives, 

 and other contrivances. In this, these naturalists were 

 greatly aided by the extreme affection of wasps for their 

 young ; for though their nest is carried off, or even cut in 

 various directions, and exposed to the light, they never 

 desert it, nor relax their attention to their progeny. When 

 a wasp's nest is removed from its natural situation, and 

 covered with a glass hive, the first operation of the inhabitants 

 is to repair the injuries it has suffered. They carry ofi? with 

 surprising activity all the earth or other matters which have 

 fallen by accident into the nest ; and when they have got it 

 thoroughly cleared of everything extraneous, they begin to 

 secure it from further derangement, by fixing it to the glass 

 with papyraceous columns, similar to those which we have 

 already described. The breaches which the nest may have 

 suffered are then repaired, and the thickness of the walls is 



