﻿78 IIYMENOPTERA 



nests amongst them. An individual of this wasp was found 

 by Dr. Birch when unrolling a mummy — "There being every 

 reason to believe that the Insect had remained in the position in 

 which it was found ever since the last rites were paid to the 

 ancient Egyptian." 



Fam. 2. Vespidae — Social Wasps. 



Claivs of the feet simple, neither ' toothed • nor bifid, middle tibiae 

 with two spurs at the tip. Insects living in societies, form- 

 ing a common dwelling of a papery or card-like material; 

 rack generation consists of males and females and of workers 

 — -imperfect females — that assist the reproductive female by 

 carrying on the industrial occupations. 



The anterior wing possesses four submarginal cells, as in the 

 Eumenidae. The attention of entomologists has been more 

 directed to the habits and architecture than to the taxonomy of 

 these Insects, so that the external structure of the Insects them- 

 selves has not been so minutely or extensively scrutinised as is 

 desirable ; de Saussure, the most important authority, bases his 

 classification of the Insects themselves on the nature of the nests 

 they form. These habitations consist of an envelope, protecting 

 cells similar in form to the comb of the honey-bee, but there is 

 this important difference between the two, that while the bee 

 forms its comb of wax that it secretes, the wasps make use of 

 paper or card that they form from fragments of vegetable tissue, 

 — more particularly woody fibre — amalgamated by means of 

 cement secreted by glands ; the vegetable fragments are obtained 

 by means of the mandibles, the front legs playing a much less 

 important part in the economy of the Vespidae than they do in 

 that of the bees and fossorial Hymenoptera. 



In most of the nests of Vespidae the comb is placed in stages 

 or stories one above the other, and separated by an intervening 

 space, but in many cases there is only one mass of comb. It is the 

 rule that, when the cells of the comb are only partially formed, eggs 

 are deposited in them, and that the larva resulting from the egg 

 is fed and tended by the mother, or by her assistants, the workers ; 

 as the larvae grow, the cells are increased in correspondence with 

 the size of the larva ; the subsequent metamorphosis to pupa and 

 imago taking place in the cells after they have been entirely 



