300 THE WASPS. 



the Drau. Just as I was finishing my modest dinner (I was 

 sitting in the open air before the house, beneath the leafy 

 roof of the tree), I noticed the swift flight backwards and 

 forwards of a common wasp. At the same time I observed 

 on a spider-web, glittering in the sun, a fine specimen of the 

 cross-spider, letting itself slowly down. When it had 

 descended to about three metres from the ground, the wasp 

 pounced on it with lightning-speed, and stung it in its thick 

 abdomen. The spider raised itself a little way, but the wasp 

 flew at it again, and inflicted a second sting. The spider 

 now fell to the ground, and the wasp at once settled on it, 

 and furiously tore the skin off its body. It then .flew up 

 and circled round the spider, struggling in the agonies of 

 death. Whenever these struggles became more vigorous it 

 fell again upon its victim, and only flew away from the 

 place when the spider showed no further signs of life. I 

 fancied that before the fight I saw, the wasp fell into the 

 web of the spider and was attacked by it, and that when it 

 escaped it took the vengeance I have related." % 



Whether the last idea of the writer is correct, may be 

 left as there given, but the desire of vengeance is certainly 

 a part of the passionate, quarrelsome, and choleric tempera- 

 ment of the wasp. According to the credible account of 

 Ratzeburg, a boy once pushed a mushroom stipe into the 

 entrance of a wasps' nest, on the Herrnkrug, near Magde- 

 burg, so that the inhabitants could not get out. Two days 

 later he went, accompanied by a relative, to the stopped-up 

 wasps' nest, to see what had happened, and some dozens of 

 wasps fell upon him and stung him so badly that he was 

 made seriously ill. His companion was left untouched. 



The common expression " to stir up a wasps' nest " shows 

 how carefully people must guard themselves against this sharp 

 and irritable insect. Even among themselves wasps depart 

 very far from the peaceable character of the bees, and some- 

 times fight with each other in the bitterest way, and the males, 

 although larger and stronger, take to rapid flight before the 

 stings of their working sisters. They distinguish friend from 

 foe among men just as well as do bees. The missionary 

 Grueinzius, in Port Natal (in Brehm, loc. cit., ix., p. 252), 

 had allowed a native species of wasp to build its nest within 

 the door-posts of his house, and in spite of frequent inter- 

 ferences with the nest, was only once stung by a young wasp,. 



