1 62 FLASHLIGHTS ON NATURE 



previous page, are partially developed females, 

 being unable to lay eggs. But in all other respects 

 they inherit the habits or instincts of their estim- 

 able mother ; and no sooner are they fairly hatched 

 out of the pupa-case, where they underwent their 

 rapid metamorphosis, than they set to work, like 

 dutiful daughters, to assist mamma in the manage- 

 ment of the city. Like the imagined world of 

 Tennyson's " Princess," no male can enter. If ever 

 there was a woman-ruled republic in the world, 

 such as Aristophanes feigned, it is a wasp's nest. 

 The workers fall to at " tidying up " at once ; they 

 put the house in order ; they go out and gather 

 paper ; they help their mother to build new cells ; 

 and they assist in feeding and tending the still- 

 increasing nursery. The first comb formed, you 

 will remember, was at the top of the foundation 

 column or footstalk ; the newer combs are built 

 below this in rows, each opening downward, so 

 that the compound house or series of flats is 

 planned on the exactly opposite system from our 

 own the top storeys being erected first, and the 

 lower ones afterward, each storey having its floor 

 above and its entrance at the bottom. At the same 

 time, the umbrella-shaped covering is continued 

 downward as an outer wall to protect the combs, 

 until finally the nest grows to be a roughly round 

 or egg-shaped body, entirely enclosed in a shell 

 or outer wall of paper, and with only a single gate- 

 way at the bottom, by which the busy workers go 

 in and out of their city. 



The nest of the tree-wasp, which we have also 



