Life Insurance for Wasps 



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perature, the egg hatches, and a tiny white 

 grub emerges, which at once begins to feed 

 upon the nearest spider, eating the soft parts 

 first, then proceeding to the next, and so on, 

 taking the tidbits of its store first, and eating 

 the harder parts later. By this time ten days 

 have passed, and the grub has grown nearly 

 as big as its room. It feels, then, that the time 

 has come for a change, and spins about itself 

 a capsule-shaped cocoon of glutinous silk, in 

 which it slumbers quietly for several days as a 

 chrysalis until perfected. 



Then it wakes, bursts its cerements, gnaws 

 a hole through the clay walls of its nursery 

 prison, and emerges into the world as a brilliant 

 wasp. It is at first limp and hardly able to 

 fly, yet it knows perfectly well how to sting 

 you if you arouse its easy anger. 



Now this simple story is really a marvelous 

 one when you ponder its details. The mother- 

 wasp was born the previous summer, too late 

 to see the method of building the adobe houses. 

 So were all her companions. There was no one 

 to teach her architecture, nor to suggest the 



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