MASONIC WORKERS. 397 



falls ! falls, though, upon eight legs, and makes off at full 

 speed, no matter whither. Our business is with his vacated 

 abode, a dome woven, as we now see, of close-spun silk, 

 open, as we said, at bottom, impervious at top, with no orifice 

 for entrance of water or of air. 1 



But we must leave, for the present, these aquatic mechanisms, 

 though as yet but half examined, that we may bestow a little of 

 our notice upon a few other assembled specimens. Here is one 

 insect, a sharp, waspish little animal, busied up to her eyes and 

 ears in our own material for building, brick. Chipping away her 

 hardest with a trenchant tool, she is employed in the work of 

 excavation. To do her justice, we cannot but admit that she 

 never leaves off; yet, for all her assiduity, her progress is but 

 slow, for as, piece by piece, each about the size of a mustard- 

 seed, she scoops into her hard material, she carries off each 

 particle to some distance from the scene of operation. 



We may take a look now at the more rapid proceedings of 

 another independent labourer, and in appearance and attire not 

 unlike the last. Like her, she also is an excavator, but she is 

 something more, more of an erector. She is employed upon 

 a block of hard sandstone. Each few grains of sand that she 

 thus detaches we see her kneading into a little pellet, and with 

 the like moulded masses (her unbaked bricks) she has built 

 already a circular wall or rampart round the edge of her exca- 

 vation. Thus proceeding, as her pit deepens her tower rises, 

 and will rise still, to the height, perhaps, of two or three inches. 



Ask you now the purpose of these arts in their miniature 

 exercise, and the name of their tiny exercisers ? The latter, 

 whom perhaps from their exterior you may have known already, 

 are wasps, " mason " wasps, 2 mother wasps, and they are 

 scooping their caves, and raising their towers, to provide secure 

 asylums for their young. 



Contiguous to the above we see some completed specimens 

 of masonry of a somewhat different construction, the work of 



1 See Vignette. 2 Odynerus. 



Q Q 



