122 The Hunting Wasps 



especially Common Flies ; when fresh meat can 

 be had, it is a windfall eagerly turned to 

 account. Who has not seen Wasps boldly enter 

 our kitchens or pounce upon the meat hanging 

 in the butchers' shops, to cut off a scrap that 

 suits them and carry it away forthwith, as 

 spolia opima for the use of the grubs ? When 

 the half-closed shutters admit a streak of sun- 

 light to the floor of a room, where the House- 

 fly is taking a luxurious nap or pohshing her 

 wings, who has not seen the Wasp rush in, 

 swoop down upon the Fly, crush her in her 

 mandibles and make off with the booty ? Once 

 again, a morsel reserved for the carnivorous 

 nurselings. 



The prey is dismembered now on the spot 

 where captured, now on the way, now at the 

 nest. The wings, which possess no nutritive 

 value, are cut off and rejected ; the legs, which 

 are poor in juices, are also sometimes disdained. 

 There remains a mutilated corpse, head, thorax, 

 abdomen, united or separated, which the Wasp 

 chews and rechews to reduce it to the pap 

 beloved of the larvae. I have tried to take the 

 place of the nurses in this method of rearing 

 grubs on Fly-soup. The subject of my experi- 

 ment was a nest of Polistes gallica, the Wasp 

 who fastens her little rosette of brown-paper 

 cells to the roots of a shrub. My kitchen-table 



