186 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
through it; Polistes, with many others, makes no 
cover at all. As a rule the combs of wasps are 
placed horizontally, but Nectarinia builds her’s in 
concentric segments of a sphere. Strength and 
attention to mechanical considerations mark most of 
the nests, but Jcaria builds out mto space quite 
regardless of these. Synaca spreads a smooth 
polished roof over her single stage of cells, which 
she boldly hangs out from a bough, while Polybia 
seeks the protection of a large leaf, or of the back of 
a tree to cover the mouths of the cells. In most 
instances the rain-drip is carefully provided against, 
and the surface is freed from all needless points, but 
Myrapetra covers her house with tubercles whose 
object is quite inexplicable. Each has its own fixed 
rule.* Whether the surface be smooth or rough, 
whether the entrance be central or lateral, whatever 
the habit be, the habit is unvarying, and the style of 
architecture in all its details is absolutely typical of 
the insect, as typical as the Phoenician bevel or the 
Norman mouldings. So I make no apology for de- 
voting a whole chapter to the consideration of the 
architecture of the comb and the case of our British 
Vespa in allits typical exactness. 
With the first promise of Spring, with the violet 
and the primrose, with the snake and the bee, on the 
same bank, from which the warmth of the sun has 
called them all forth, the mother wasp enters on 
active life. During the cold wet winter months she 
* De Saussure, op. cit., and Mobius, ‘Die Nester der geselligen 
Wespen,’ 4to, Hamburg, 1856, have made the mode of construction 
of the nest the basis of a system of classification of Social Wasps. 
