SOCIAL LIFE OF WASPS 25 
for whose pioneering Man might never have been 
—that undoubtedly bend matter to their will out- 
side their bodies. Think of the nest-builders 
like the house-martins and weaver-birds, the net- 
makers like the spiders, the home-makers like the 
termites and beavers, the trap-contrivers like the 
larval ant-lions, the store-accumulators like the 
bees, the bed-makers like the anthropoid apes, and 
so on, not forgetting, as a sort of climax, the honey- 
mooning bower-birds. It may not be “art” that 
these creatures show, but there is no doubt as to 
their triumphantly skilful use of materials. Samuel 
Butler declared that animals have tools which are 
part of them and cannot be laid down; whereas 
man has limbs which are apart from him and 
detachable. Which is, in the main, good sense. 
But whether a living creature planes with a tool 
or with its mandibles, it planes; and that requires 
skill. And the planing is only the first step toward 
the wasp’s nest, which, taken objectively, is a far 
finer thing than many a human erection which 
entitles its tenant to a vote. 
And it is not only the architecture of wasps that 
commands our admiration; there is the coherence 
of the large family or community, sometimes 
numbering several thousand members; there is 
the creature’s strength, displayed in lifting a drone- 
fly half its own size off the ground and carrying. 
it through the air; there is contrivance in cutting 
off the wings of a big insect before it tries to 
transport it through the air; there is the uncanny 
