INSECT INTRUDERS. 



other larvae. As soon as the first wasps 

 mature, however, they undertake these 

 duties and the old wasp now solely 

 occupies herself with laying eggs in the 

 cells as fast as the workers build them. 

 This nest continues until the cold weather 

 when the whole of the workers die off, a 

 few females only living through the 

 winter to found the nests of the following 

 year. Such is the life history of our 

 common Indian social wasp as it is called 

 the long-legged yellow denizen of our 

 verandahs which rarely stings. 



I have often been asked in the course of 

 my Indian experience What is the 

 little insect which bores shot holes into 

 our bamboo furniture and into the bam- 

 boos and timber work of the roofs of 

 thatched bungalows, resulting in little 

 showers of dust descending upon one's 

 tables, chairs and floors below ? Insidious 

 little pests are these belonging to the 

 beetle tribe and, although so minute in 

 size, owing to the prolificness with which 

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