ARCHITECTURE. 187 
has sheltered herself as she best might in dry banks 
or old walls, in the folds of curtains or in the toes of 
shoes laid by, like herself, for the season. And if, by 
chance, she has been disturbed from her hiding place, 
dusty, half torpid, she has seemed more like an out- 
cast from the old nest than the future mother of a 
colony. But all this is altered now, and as she flies 
quietly along, examining each crevice in quest of a 
proper place to build her nest in, the eye of the 
gardener recognizes in her no helpless wanderer 
seeking a hiding place, but an instrument of de- 
struction which he will do well to crush in the bud. 
These large female wasps, these future queens just 
entering on active life have, however, yet a very try- 
ing time to pass through. Besides the little boys who 
are stimulated by a bribe of so much a head to catch 
and kill them for the gardener, there are other, yet 
more persistent, if not more active enemies. What 
with late frosts, and rains, and birds, and little boys, 
comparatively few of the wasps which have lived 
through the winter survive to become the mothers 
of colonies. For, through all these weeks she is 
alone and unaided, with a home to find, a nest to 
build, and then the hungry grubs to feed. And all 
this when food is scarce, and the sun’s warmth, that 
first necessary of life to a wasp, so very uncertain. 
When, at last, the wanderings of the future queen 
have come to an end, and she has found a hole or 
a branch to suit her fastidious taste, she enters, in 
earnest, on the work of her life. The first rudiments 
of the nest that is to be appear in the form of a little 
grey cap of a flattened conical form, from half an 
inch to an inch wide, hanging from a footstalk. 
