28 | . NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
and sealed one cell she goes on to prepare another 
in the same way. The Odyneri build several of these 
together, but Hwmenes coarctata* makes each cell sepa- 
rate, fixing them on the stems of the heath, each 
little round bead with its egg, its caterpillars, and 
perhaps its parasite. In due course of time the egg 
hatches into a larva, which eats up the food so care- 
fully provided for it, and then, having lined the walls: — 
of its chamber with a smooth silk web, changes into a 
pupa, and so sleeps through the winter. 
The maternal duties of the mother-wasp seem to 
cease with the closure of each cell; after she has put 
in the food and closed the door she has no further 
care for the future brood. It depends on the capacity 
of the hole she has selected whether she shall have 
more than one nest. Whether she shall lay her eggs 
in one or in many places is indifferent to her; for 
there is no tie to attach her to the place, there is 
nothing more that she can do for her progeny. Her 
work can scarcely be called a nest, as that word is 
applied to the wonderful structures of the social 
wasps. It is merely a collection of cells of all shapes, 
packed without any order into the most out of the 
way places. I have one from inside the lock of a = - 
kitchen ‘door. Here, in a thoroughfare from the 
kitchen to the scullery, with all the passing back- 
wards and forwards, and the banging, and the cooking, 
the mother-wasp had laid up her brood, and brought 
in all their future sustenance through the keyhole. 
And here the pup had lain safe for months, till, on 
the report of what had been noticed in the summer, 
the lock was unscrewed to display what no lock- 
* Wood. ‘Homes without Hands,’ p. 352, and fig. 
