THE FIRST PAPER-MAKER 151 



feet and imperfect queens or workers but not 

 by those defenceless creatures, the males. The 

 nature of the sting (so far as it is not already well 

 known to most of us by pungent experience) I 

 will enter into later ; it must suffice for the pre- 

 sent to say that it is in essence an instrument for 

 depositing the eggs, and that it is only incidentally 

 turned into a weapon of offence or defence, and 

 a means of stunning or paralysing the prey or 

 food-insects. 



The first thing to understand about a community 

 of wasps is the way it originates. The story is a 

 strange one. When the first frosts set in, almost 

 all the wasps in temperate countries die off to 

 a worker from the effects of cold. The chill 

 winds nip them. For a few days in autumn you 

 may often notice the last straggling survivors 

 crawling feebly about, very uncomfortable and 

 numb from the cold, and with their temper some- 

 what soured by the consciousness of their own 

 exceeding weakness. In this irritable condition, 

 feeling their latter end draw nigh, they are given 

 to using their stings with waspish virulence on the 

 smallest provocation ; they move about half-dazed 

 on the damp ground, or lie torpid in their nests 

 till death overtakes them. Of the whole populous 

 city which hummed with life and business but a 

 few weeks earlier, no more than two or three 

 survivors at the outside struggle somehow through 

 the winter, to carry on the race of wasps to suc- 

 ceeding generations. The colder the season, the 

 fewer the stragglers who live it out ; in open 



