302 MOTHERS AMONG WASPS. 



a tunnel excavated in the wood, and divided by thin partitions 

 of clay into five or six compartments, each with its supply of 

 pollen for the single inhabitant who is to emerge from the egg 

 deposited therein. 1 



Besides these, there are bee " miners," which, as their name 

 imports, excavate galleries, for their nurseries, in the earth. 



These artisans amongst solitary bees have sisters in nearly 

 all their crafts amongst the solitary wasps, many of which latter 

 work no less expertly than the former in their different styles 

 of maternally-designed architecture. 2 Nor are these waspish 

 mothers a whit behindhand in providing for their nestlings' 

 necessities, only showing their fiercer propensities in the nature 

 of the food provided which, in place of a heap of pollen, is 

 usually a pile of flies or gnats, and sometimes, as in the case of 

 the wasp " mason," a spiral column of living caterpillars, or a 

 brace or two of live spiders. 



On these, the number of which is nicely calculated to meet 

 his wants, the young wasp is nourished up to perfect wasphood, 

 unless, spite of his mother's labours so cunningly protective, he 

 himself fall a prey to the usurping offspring of some ichneumon- 

 fly, who, more clever still, has contrived, cuckoo-like, to lay 

 her egg within the nest he occupies. 



One species of mason-wasp, mentioned by Bonnett, ap- 

 proaches nearer than any of the above to the feathered race in 

 her mode of supplying her young, for instead of enclosing at 

 once within her nursery larder a store sufficient to supply the 

 future exigencies of its inmate, she, from time to time, carries 

 thither a living caterpillar, opening and reclosing the nest for 

 her entrance and exit. 



The proscriptive skill and care exhibited by solitary bees 

 and wasps in the construction of their nurseries is probably, 

 as with birds in the building of their nests, entirely of an 

 instinctive character ; but we must assign, surely, one of a 

 higher description to certain other features of insect maternity, 

 with a few of which we shall conclude our imperfect sketch. 

 1 See Vignette. * See Vignette. 



