The Mason-Wasps 



There is no room for the glorious problem 

 of the Bee-hive in these elementary essays. 

 Let us confine ourselves to the Wasps. It 

 has been said: 



" Fill a bottle with dried peas and add a 

 little water. The peas, in swelling, will be- 

 come polyhedrons by mutual pressure. Even 

 so with the Wasps' cells. The builders work 

 in a crowd. Each builds at her own will, 

 placing her work in juxtaposition to her 

 neighbours'; and the reciprocal thrusts pro- 

 duce the hexagon." 



A preposterous explanation, which no one 

 would venture to suggest if only he had con- 

 descended to make use of his eyes. Good 

 people, why not look into the early stages of 

 the Wasp's work? This is quite easy in the 

 case of the Polistes, who builds in the open, 

 on a twig of some hedge-plant. In the 

 spring, when the Wasps'-nest is founded, 

 the mother is alone. She is not surrounded 

 by collaborators who, vying with her in zeal, 

 would place partition against partition. She 

 sets up her first prism. There is nothing to 

 hamper her, nothing to impose one form 

 upon her rather than another; and the ori- 

 ginal cell, free from contact in every direc- 

 tion, is as perfect an hexagonal prism as the 

 rest will be. The faultless geometry of 

 236 



