94 STRUCTURE OF WASPS 9 NESTS. 



discover the Wasp to be a paper-maker, and was enabled to 

 trace the subsequent processes of her manufacture. 



The foundress, whom we saw this morning, had been occu- 

 pied, while settled on the post, in the first or wood-rasping 

 process of her fabrication; and on entering the hole, she no 

 doubt carried with her a bundle of fibres to be kneaded into 

 paper-paste. Then, supposing that the nest was in an early 

 stage of progress, she would proceed to spread a covering of 

 this substance over the first few cells of her incipient home, 

 strengthening the same with repeated layers. Her next pro- 

 ceedings have been thus described : * " She now begins to 

 build the first terrace of her city, which she suspends horizon- 

 tally, and not, like the combs of a Beehive, in a perpendicular 

 position. The suspension of which we speak is light and 

 elegant compared with the more heavy union of the Hive-bee's 

 combs. It is, in fact, a hanging floor or terrace, immovably 

 secured by rods of similar material with the roof, but rather 

 stronger. The terrace itself is circular, and composed of an 

 immense number of cells made of the paper already described, 

 and almost of the same size and form as those of a honey-comb, 

 each being a perfect hexagon." These cells, however, are 

 never used as Honey-pots by Wasps as they are by Bees, for 

 Wasps make no honey, and the cells are wholly appropriated to 

 rearing the young. When the foundress Wasp has completed 

 a certain number of cells, and deposited eggs in them, she soon 

 intermits her building operations in order to procure food for 

 the young grubs, which now require all her care. In a few 

 weeks these become perfect Wasps, and lend their assistance in 

 the extension of the edifice, enlarging the original coping of 

 the foundress by side walls, and forming another platform of 

 cells, suspended to the first by columns, as that had been sus- 

 pended to the ceiling. By the end of summer, this city of 

 hanging terraces is completed, and the descendants of the ori- 

 ginal foundress, according to the calculation of Reaumur, may 

 amount to 30,000 in one year. 



1 Insect Architecture, p. 76. 



