CHAPTER XXIV. 



GENERAL DETAILS. 



TNFERIOR in intelligence, but stronger or hastier in 

 JL character than the bees, is the whole nearly allied large 

 and warlike family of the wasps, which although far more 

 simply organised have as numerous colonies as do bees, 

 termites, and ants. The wasp State is arranged just like 

 that of the humble bee. Since wasps and humble bees do 

 not live over the winter, the alone surviving fertile female 

 builds a nest in the spring underground or in some other 

 favorable spot, lays eggs in it and nurses the larvae hatched 

 therefrom until the young emerge and are able to assist the 

 mother in the further building and the tendance of the brood. 

 The insects which emerge during this period are incapable 

 of laying eggs although they are of the female sex ; their 

 whole activity is devoted to the business of nest-building 

 and brood-tending, by which work their sexual organs are 

 arrested. As with bees and ants, they are the neuters or 

 workers. Toward the end of summer the female lays both 

 eggs from which males are hatched and others from which 

 fertile females are developed. These males and females unite 

 in the autumn. As soon as the cold weather begins all save 

 the fertile females die ; the latter live through the winter 

 and found new colonies in the following spring. 



In these proceedings two things were for a long time 

 regarded ' as inexplicable, and were considered as a mystery 

 evidencing a very special and wise disposition of providence. 

 The first puzzle, or the appearance of sexless workers among 

 male and female animals was explained, as soon as it was 

 understood that the so-called neuters as already shown 

 with bees and ants were not really sexless, but were only 

 undeveloped females, whose sexual organs did not develop 

 owing to the expenditure of strength on nest-building and 

 on the tendance of the young, while on the other hand, as 



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