390 



INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY 



and his wife,^ to delight in tracing out their curious ways of 

 life and interesting history. This insect has been called " a 

 tiger-soul on elfin wings," ^ and the description suits it well, 

 for marvellously in contrast are the audacity and courage of 

 the little, vividly coloured thief and the delicate, minute wings 

 on which it speeds so swiftly through the air. 



As in the case of Humble Bees, only the 

 l^ggjj^''^ queen wasp survives the winter, hibernating in 

 some sheltered crevice. On her alone depends 

 the whole possible future colony of many thousands of wasps. 

 She awakes usually early in April, and having cleaned and 

 brushed herself she leaves her hiding-place, and after a hasty 

 meal at once begins to search for a convenient spot where she 

 can found her city, which usually must be safely hidden in 

 the earth, though sometimes it is suspended under the eaves 

 of a house or barn. Very likely she will take possession of 

 some burrow she finds in the earth, and will enlarge it to suit 

 her needs, carrying out the soil bit by bit in her mouth. 

 Soon she flies off to find some dry exposed piece of well- 

 seasoned wood, and with her 

 specially powerful jaws she 

 scrapes away a few of its fibres, 

 which she then bites up and 

 mixes with a sticky secretion 

 from her mouth, until it is a 

 pulpy mass (Fig. 301). With 

 this she flies back to her bur- 

 row and begins to build. 



The first pellets 

 of wood pulp she 

 fixes to some firm 

 object, such as a root in the roof 

 of a cavity in the burrow where 

 she elects to build, so that a little pendent stalk is formed ; to 

 the end of this she attaches first a small cup-shaped cover about 

 \ an inch in diameter, and then, hanging down below it, a 

 little flat platform with three or four shallow cup-shaped cells 

 with their open mouths downwards. The pulp with which she 

 builds hardens quickly into a tough grey papery substance. 



1 Wasps, Social and Solitary, by G. and E. Peckham. 

 ^ The Wasp, Fiona Macleod. 



The Begin- 

 ning of the 

 Nest. 



Fig. 301. — A Wasp scraping Wood 

 with her Jaws. 



