4f,0 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



ii. and there must have been sixteen or seventeen. It 



only took them half an hour to get through a quarter of an 

 ounce of honey ; they never appeared to rest for a moment, and 

 all their movements were marvellously quick. I was much 

 struck by the use they made of their first pair of legs while 

 cutting up the caterpillars. They stood reared up on the two 

 hack pair of legs, using the front pair to hold the morsel, and 

 with these, together with their jaws, they manipulated the 

 morsel with as much ease and freedom as I could have done 

 with my two hands. After a close scrutiny in two cases (and I 

 was able to verify it again later), I noticed that the calcaria 

 were used like the prongs of a fork to hold the morsel in place and 

 prevent it from slipping too far up between the legs. It was on 

 this day also that they started building a paper envelope round 

 the combs, for I had destroyed the original one when I dug up 

 the nest. I had noticed that they were apparently nibbling on 

 the top and round the edges of the combs, but I could not make 

 out what they were at. However, half-way through the morning 

 there was no possible doubt, for two large pieces were already 

 made and they were hard at work on them. The rapidity with 

 which they worked was nothing short of amazing. They took 

 the edge lengthivise between their jaws, bending it about and 

 depositing a fresh layer of material on it. A piece held up 

 to the light displayed the structure perfectly, for it showed 

 a series of lines where the fresh material was added, in just 

 the same way as the lines show the increase of an oyster- 

 shell. 



During the course of the summer I had several opportunities 

 of watching wasps scraping up the fibres of wood used in the 

 construction of the nest, as there were some old palings in the 

 garden which were evidently a recognized place for wood- 

 scraping. It took them on an average about two minutes to 

 collect the bundle, which was rolled up in a little pellet (in which 

 action the fore feet assisted) and carried among the mouth 

 organs behind the jaws, so that from in front of the wasp one 

 could not see it. In this way the jaws were left free for scrap- 

 ing, and whenever the pellet became likely to slip away, the front 

 pair of legs were used to push it forward again into the mouth 

 organs. I noticed that they always walked backwards when 



