WASPS 213 
temper very much alike, which I had been accus- 
tomed to observe in boyhood and youth in a 
distant region. They attracted me more, perhaps, 
than any other insects on account of their singular 
and brilliant coloration and their formidable char- 
acter. ‘They were beautiful but painful creatures; 
the pain they caused me was first bodily, when I 
interfered in their concerns or handled them care- 
lessly, and was soon over; later it was mental and 
more enduring. 
To the very young colour is undoubtedly the 
most attractive quality in nature, and these insects 
were enamelled in colours that made them the 
rivals of butterflies and shining metallic beetles. 
There were wasps with black and yellow rings and 
with black and scarlet rings; wasps of a uniform 
golden brown; others like our demoiselle dragon- 
fly that looked as if fresh from a bath of splendid 
metallic blue; others with steel-blue bodies and 
bright red wings; others with crimson bodies, 
yellow head and legs, and bright blue wings; others 
black and gold, with pink head and legs; and so 
on through scores and hundreds of species “as 
Nature list to play with her little ones,” until one 
marvelled at so great a variety, so many singular 
and beautiful contrasts, produced by half-a-dozen 
brilliant colours. 
It was when I began to find out the ways of 
wasps with other insects on which they nourish 
their young that my pleasure in them became 
mixed with pain. For they did not, like spiders, 
