A MASON-WASP 59 



would be reduced to pulp by damp, must have a dry shelter. 

 Heat is a necessity to her. 



Is it possible that she is a foreigner ? Did she come, 

 perhaps, from the shores of Africa, from the land of dates 

 to the land of olives ? It would be natural, in that case, 

 that she should find our sunshine not warm enough for 

 her, and should seek the artificial warmth of the fireside. 

 This would explain her habits, so unlike those of the other 

 Wasps, by all of whom mankind is avoided. 



What was her life before she became our guest ? Where 

 did she lodge before there were any houses ? Where did 

 she shelter her grubs before chimneys were thought of ? 



Perhaps, when the early inhabitants of the hills near 

 Serignan were making weapons out of flints, scraping goat- 

 skins for clothes, and building huts of mud and branches, 

 those huts were already frequented by the Pelopseus. Perhaps 

 she built her nest in some bulging pot, shaped out of clay 

 by the thumbs of our ancestors ; or in the folds of the garments, 

 the skins of the Wolf and the Bear. When she made her 

 home on the rough walls of branches and clay, did she choose 

 the nearest spot, I wonder, to the hole in the roof by which 

 the smoke was let out ? Though not equal to our chimneys 

 it may have served at a pinch. 



If the Pelopaeus really lived here with the earliest human 

 inhabitants, what improvements she has seen ! She too 

 must have profited greatly by civilisation : she has turned 

 man's increasing comfort into her own. When the dwelling 

 with a roof and a ceiling was planned, and the chimney with 

 a flue was invented, we can imagine the chilly creature saying 

 to herself : 



' How pleasant this is ! Let us pitch our tent here.' 



But we will go back further still. Before huts existed, 

 before the niche in the rut, before man himself had appeared, 

 where did the Pelopseus build ? The question does not stand 

 alone. Where did the Swallow and the Sparrow build before 

 there were windows and chimneys to build in ? 



