52 FABRE'S BOOK OF INSECTS 



as a most useful building-site, the folds of a smock were looked 

 upon as a capital shelter ; and the work of building started 

 at once. On rising from the table one of the men would 

 shake his smock, and another his hat, to rid it of the Wasp's 

 nest, which was already the size of an acorn. 



The cook in that farmhouse regarded the Wasps with 

 no friendly eye. They dirtied everything, she said. Dabs 

 of mud on the ceiling, on the walls, or on the chimney-piece 

 you could put up with ; but it was a very different matter 

 when you found them on the linen and the curtains. She 

 had to beat the curtains every day with a bamboo. And it 

 was trouble thrown away. The next morning the Wasps 

 began building as busily as ever. 



II 



HER BUILDING 



I sympathised with the sorrows of that farm-cook, but 

 greatly regretted that I could not take her place. How gladly 

 I would have left the Wasps undisturbed, even if they had 

 covered all the furniture with mud ! How I longed to know 

 what the fate of a nest would be, if perched on the uncertain 

 support of a coat or a curtain ! The nest of the Mason-bee 

 is made of hard mortar, which surrounds the twig on which 

 it is built, and becomes firmly fixed to it ; but the nest of the 

 Pelopseus Wasp is a mere blob of mud, without cement or 

 foundations. 



The materials of which it is made are nothing but wet 

 earth or dirt, picked up wherever the soil is damp enough. 

 The thin clay of a river-bank is very suitable, but in my 

 stony country streams are rare. I can, however, watch the 

 builders at my leisure in my own garden, when a thin trickle 

 of water runs all day, as it does sometimes, through the little 

 trenches that are cut in my vegetable plots. 



The Pelopseus Wasps of the neighbourhood soon become 



