OCTOBER 273 



does she receive any assistance in building till she has 

 reared and fed her first brood. Then the young wasps 

 co-operate with a will, resting not from toil till the edifice 

 is finished and the colony complete. It seems a woful 

 waste of skilled labour that the beautiful structure serves 

 only for a single season, and that the work should have 

 to be done afresh from the foundation every year by a 

 new queen. Even our own precious leasehold system, so 

 ruinous to excellence in street architecture, does not affect 

 masterpieces like Westminster Abbey or Somerset House. 



Perhaps it savours of slander to speak of the queen 

 wasp's lovers. In wasps the distinction of sex is fluctuat- 

 ing ; unlike bees, their nature is so plastic that there are 

 individuals intermediate between male and female, pos- 

 sibly destined to become one or other as circumstances 

 arise. Parthenogenesis Lucina sine concubitu is 

 believed to be common among spinsters of the race; 

 which notwithstanding, the perpetuation of wasps is 

 exceedingly precarious. Abundance of queens in spring 

 by no means ensures many wasps in autumn, nor vice 

 versa. Witness the caricature of summer we had in 

 1903. In the bitter spring of that year queens were 

 rather scarcer than usual, yet the autumn was memorable 

 for multitude of wasps. One would have supposed that 

 the intemperate deluge of June and the inclemency of 

 July would have been fatal to creatures so sensitive of 

 cold. They can keep warm, indeed, by staying at home, 

 for the temperature within the nest is always considerably 

 higher than the external air ; but how did they manage 

 to collect material for building and food for their ravenous 

 young ? 



Almost more interesting than the habits of social wasps 

 s 



