THE TOILERS OF THE NIGHT. 49 



work, we found it difficult to realize that the patient little crea- 

 ture had been at work for more than twenty-four hours, with 

 only one brief intermission. Without hurry or flurry she kept 

 at her task, reminding us, in her business-like ways of the social 

 wasps of the genus Vespa. When we left her, at dusk, we at- 

 tached the recording tube to the stem, and at ten o'clock in the 

 evening we found that she had not stopped working. We 

 emptied the glass and left her. 



At seven o'clock in the morning of July twenty-ninth we paid 

 her a visit, and could scarcely believe the testimony of our 

 senses when we saw that the record was one of unceasing toil 

 through the long hours of the second night. We began to won- 

 der if she would ever finish her task. Wonderful though she 

 was we had grown a little weary of our long session of watch- 

 ing. We had been glad that she worked through the first night; 

 it was creditable to her and interesting to us, and we admired 

 her even more for sticking to it through the second, but when 

 it looked as though we might have to remain by her side through 

 another long day, watching an endless series of loads as they 

 were carried out, we confess that we thought she was rather 

 overdoing it. Gradually, however, she slowed up her work, 

 taking two or three minutes to make a journey down and up. 

 At last, at just nine o'clock, her head appeared at the top of 

 the stalk, and after a slight hesitation she flew away. The nest 

 was completed. 



We have studied hymenoptera for a number of years and we 

 feel that we are on terms of more or less intimacy with many of 

 the species, but never before have we known one to work after 

 day was done. We have often gone out with a lantern at bed- 

 time for a tour of inspection among our nests and have always 

 found the inhabitants quiet and presumably asleep. The social 

 wasps are very industrious but during the hot nights of July 

 they are to be seen clustered together on the outside of their pa- 

 per nests in deep repose, and although the Vespa wasps that nest 

 in the ground sometimes come home late in the twilight we have 

 never seen them work after it was really dark. Polistes fusca 



