THE VALIANT WASP 



THE sun shines as it scarcely has done since Easter, 

 making a visible incense of heat ripple up from the 

 whole garden, sending the swallows almost out of 

 sight in quest of their prey, causing certain vegetation 

 to crack audibly as it is twisted or strained by the 

 unwonted temperature. But the sharp " snip, snip " 

 that comes from the wooden frame of the cucumber- 

 bed is neither the complaint of an overstrained twig 

 nor the crackling of a crane's-bill pod discharging its 

 seed. A wasp, brilliant in new black-and-gold, is 

 there, biting the fibre into short lengths to make 

 communal paper for the extension of the nest. 



The social ground -wasps of our neighbourhood are 

 of two well-marked species. One is a slender, round- 

 bodied insect, the other flatter and shorter, its 

 abdomen shaped like the tip of a thumb if that of the 

 first may be said to be like the tip of a finger. A 

 difference of habit accompanies the difference in 

 shape, for the thumb-shaped wasp builds close under 

 the turf, the other in a deeper hole, and the thumb- 

 shaped wasp has a far shorter temper than the 

 other. It will be necessary to study their respective 

 architecture before saying more, but as far as 

 memory goes, the thumb-shaped, shallow-building 

 '5 



