206 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
add that, again, in Demerara, where no such long dry 
periods are to be reckoned on, and where rain falls at 
any time with a violence which would dash our 
British nests to pieces, a substance is used adapted 
to the exigencies of the situation. And so the little 
Chartergus makes her house of a card-board which 
would indeed call forth a manufacturer's admiration. 
The material employed is the finest cotton down, andas 
many as sixteen or more layers of this may be counted 
in the hard card-board walls of the nest. Washing 
one of our English nests is an operation not to be 
lightly undertaken, but the nest of Chartergus will 
bear, and, from what I have seen, generally requires, 
a pretty free use of soap and water. But I write this 
under the possible correction of a larger experience. 
For the nests which I have seen represent but a small 
portion of what are found in these different quarters 
of the world. 
This much British wasps’ nests have in common: 
the story is very nearly the same, whichever species 
may have been particularly under notice. Whether 
hanging from a spray exposed to the wind and rain, 
or buried under ground, whether lodged in the 
rotten trunk of an old hollow tree, or more com- 
fortably attached to a roof-beam, the nests all begin 
and go on in the same way, and, if they survive the 
various accidents to which they are liable, come to 
the same end. ‘The various species, however, all 
adapt their structures, to a certain extent, to the 
circumstances under which they are placed. The 
hornet makes a less elaborate case round her comb — 
when the hollow tree which she has chosen renders 
