44 CONVERSATIONS ON 



ing you of a gentleman who watched the 

 little cloak-maker to see how he made his 

 garment ? Well, this gentleman, whose name 

 was Reaumur, was trying for twenty years, 

 he says, to find out how the wasp made 

 paper, before he succeeded. At last, one day, 

 he saw a female wasp alight on the sash of 

 his window and begin to gnaw the wood ; he 

 watched her, and saw that she pulled off from 

 the wood fibre after fibre, about the tenth part 

 of an inch long, and not so large as a hair. 

 She gathered these up into a knot with her 

 feet, and then flew to another part of the sash, 

 and went to work, stripping off more fibres or 

 threads, and putting them to the bundle she 

 had already. At last he caught her, to ex- 

 amine the bundle, and found that its colour 

 was exactly like that of a wasp's nest ; but 

 the little ball was dry ; she had not yet 

 wetted it to make a pulp of it which could 

 be spread out. He noticed another thing, 

 that this bundle was not at all like wood 

 gnawed by other insects ; it was not sawdust, 

 but threads of some little length bruised into 

 lint. He then set to work himself with his 

 penknife, and very soon scraped and bruised 

 some of the wood of the same window-sash, 



