HABITATIONS OF IXSECTS. 283 



colonnade of from forty to fifty of these pillars ; the upper and lower 

 combs by a smaller number. 



The cells, which in a populous nest are not fewer than 16,000, are of 

 different sizes, corresponding to that of the three orders of individuals 

 which compose the community ; the largest for the grubs of females, the 

 smallest for those of workers. The last always occupy an entire comb, 

 while the cells of the males and females are often intermixed. Besides 

 openings which are left between the walls of the combs to admit of access 

 from one to the other, there are at the bottom of each nest two holes, by 

 one of which the wasps uniformly enter, and through the other issue from 

 the nest, and thus avoid all confusion or interruption of their common 

 labours. As the nest is often a foot and a half under ground, it is requi- 

 site that a covered way should lead to its entrance. This is excavated by 

 the wasps, who are excellent miners, and is often very long and tortuous, 

 forming a beaten road to the subterranean city, well known to the inhabi- 

 tants, though its entrance is concealed from incurious eyes. The cavity 

 itself, which contains the nest, is either the abandoned habitation of moles 

 or field-mice, or a cavern purposely dug out by the wasps, which exert 

 themselves with such industry as to accomplish the arduous undertaking in 

 a few days. 



When the cavity and entrance to it are completed, the next part of the 

 process is to lay the foundations of the city to be included in it, which, 

 contrary to the usual custom of builders, wasps begin at the top, con- 

 tinuing downwards. I have already told you that the coatings which com- 

 pose the dome are a sort of rough but thin paper, and that the rest of the 

 nest is composed of the same substance variously applied. " Whence,'* 

 you will inquire, " do the wasps derive it ? " They are manufac- 

 turers of the article, and prepare it from a material even more singular 

 than any of those which have of late been proposed for this purpose; 

 namely, the fibres of wood. 1 These they detach by means of their jaws 

 from window-frames, posts, and rails, &c., and when they have amassed a 

 heap of the filament, moisten the whole with a few drops of a viscid glue 

 from their mouth, and, kneading it with their jaws into a sort of paste or 

 papier mdche, fly off with it to their nest. This ductile mass they attach 

 to that part of the building upon which they are at work, walking back- 

 wards and spreading it into laminae of the requisite thinness by means of 

 their jaws, tongue, and legs. This operation is repeated several times, 

 until at length, by aid of fresh supplies of the material and the combined 

 exertion of so many workmen, the proper number of layers of paper that 

 are to compose the roof is finished. This paper is as thin as that of the 

 letter which you are reading ; and you may form an idea of the labour 

 which even the exterior of a wasp's nest requires, on being told that not 

 fewer than fifteen or sixteen sheets of it are usually placed above each 

 other with slight intervening spaces, making the whole upwards of an inch 

 and a half in thickness. When the *dome is completed, the uppermost 

 comb is next begun, in which, as well as all the other parts of the build- 

 ing, precisely the same material and the same process, with little variation, 

 are employed. In the structure of the connecting pillars, there seems a 



1 Reaumur says decaying wood, vi. 182. ; but White asserts (and my own obser- 

 vations confirm his opinion) that wasps obtain their paper from sound timber ; hor- 

 nets, only from that which is decayed. White's Nat. Hist, by Markwick, ii. 228. 



