2O2 My Neighbor's Wood-Shed 



when a hat or cane was brushed too near 

 their homes ; and frequently a black-and- 

 white, noisy fellow came searching for house- 

 flies, and would depart, when a capture was 

 made, with a buzz that sounded like the 

 "loud hum of satisfaction," as the news- 

 papers have it, when a dull speaker has the 

 luck to be momentarily brilliant. All these 

 stinging inse&s are busy, however hot the 

 day, and their earnestness makes them enter- 

 taining. They seem to be concentrations 

 of the day's fierce heat, and more like winged 

 flames than winged flies. It is warming to 

 look at their empty nests on a winter day, if 

 we recall the August sunshine and parched 

 fields of the past summer. It is down in the 

 books that wasps and hornets occasionally 

 disfigure the walls of dwellings by placing 

 their nests thereon. They are not so ugly ; 

 they will bear examination, and this is more 

 than can be said of many a mantel ornament. 

 The red admiral and painted beauty but- 

 terflies are fond of the chips that clutter the 

 floor of the wood-shed, though every one in 

 summer is dry and dusty. They have no 

 choice apparently, unless it be for the clean, 

 white inner side of a chip. Is this that they 



