THE VALIANT WASP 151 



wasp makes whiter paper, and keeps its nest rather 

 oval than globular. 



A third social wasp, as is well known, hangs its 

 nest in a tree, but whereas in other districts a low- 

 growing shrub is chosen, we have always found our 

 " carpenter-wasps " building on the branch of a pear 

 tree twenty feet and upwards from the ground. They 

 make regrettably tempting targets, and exciting ones, 

 too, since, after the first shot at all events, the price 

 of a short range may be a sting. Since the days 

 when the flung stone was to us the highest available 

 form of artillery, the tree-hung wasp-nest has become 

 so rare that it is years since we have seen one. 

 According to our experience this does not seem a 

 method of building likely to prove a successful means 

 of propagating the species, and probably the wasps 

 have found the same. 



Not at all infrequently the queen-wasp, whose duty 

 it is in spring to start a new community all by 

 herself, chooses a site midway between that of the 

 ground-wasp and the tree-wasp. We have found 

 such experimental nests hanging on the wall side of 

 lumber standing in a shed, and at the back of some 

 flat object hanging on the wall like a picture. But 

 these nests have always been discovered small, 

 whence it may be gathered that this kind of experi- 

 ment is always a failure. A friend near Chelmsford, 

 who left her house empty for about a fortnight this 

 spring, on her return found herself disturbed in the 

 early morning by a deep buzzing. Afterwards she 

 found a pretty, grey, apple-shaped object hanging to 

 one of the window-curtains, and so far was she from 

 connecting it with the wasp that she at first thought 



