MOTHERS AMONG WASPS. 89 



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

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



In all these varied operations, performed for a like purpose, 

 the maternal bees, unlike the mothers of the feathered race, 

 have to perform their tasks entirely unassisted by their idle 

 consorts, who are never the partners of their toil. 



These female artizans 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.* Nor are 

 these waspish mothers a whit behindhand in providing for 

 their nestlings' necessities, only showing their fiercer propen- 

 sities in the nature of the food provided which, in place of a 

 heap of pollen, is usually a pile of flies or gnats, and some- 

 times, 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 cannibal is nourished up to perfect wasp- 

 hood, unless, spite of his mother's labours so cunningly pro- 

 tective, 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 Bonnet, ap- 

 proaches nearer than any of the above to the feathered race 

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



* See Vignette. 



