270 ANIMAL LIFE 



itself is a mass of clay worked, sometimes with stones, 

 into a vase-like or irregular shape. When broken 

 open the nest is found to contain a surprise, for instead 

 of the white wasps' comb, or the grubs that we should 

 perhaps expect to see, a mass of caterpillars is revealed. 

 The caterpillars are all of one kind, and usually to all 

 appearance dead. But if dead they have none of 

 the shrivelled appearance that in a few hours over- 

 takes a caterpillar killed by ordinary methods of 

 starvation. These larva; are still pliable and fresh in 

 colour. They have no trace of the rank smell that 

 issues from a naturally dead larva, and, if we keep 

 them, they will long remain as fresh and healthy-looking 

 as in life. But not one will come to life again. In a 

 few days the wasp disappears, and may not return. 

 It is clear that the extraordinary store of preserved 

 caterpillars is not touched by the wasp. If the nest 

 is not hopelessly destroyed by examination, it will in 

 the course of a month produce one or more wasps 

 oi a like kind ; but at the expense' of the caterpillars. 

 Either, therefore, the caterpillars become wasps or 

 arc in some indirect way transformed into wasp-bodies. 

 The Chinese, from the time of Confucius at least, have 

 noticed this strange transformation, and suppose that 

 the wasp addresses to the caterpillar a message or 

 spell ' to mimic me.' This the resigned caterpillar 

 to all appearance does, and to tins day the word ' Jiga,' 

 or ' mimic me,' is the name by which the wasp is 

 known in China. 



The disappearance ol the caterpillars is rendered 



