6466 Insects. 



after the fashion of a pear, a toadstool, a bottle, or budget of leather, 

 and some like a standing cup with handles." 



" They have such a tender care over their females (especially at 

 such times as they are great with young), and suffer them so much to 

 have their own wills, as they will neither permit them to take any 

 pains abroad for their living, nor yet to seek for their meat at home ; 

 but the males flying about, like good purveyors, bring all home to 

 their own dwellings, thereby, as it were, strictly enjoyning the females 

 to keep themselves within doors." 



" They make their combs in the beginning of summer, fashioning 

 their small cells with four little doors, wherein small worms do breed ; 

 these increase for the most part in autumn, not in the spring, and 

 especially in the full of the moon. This one thing here is to be noted, 

 that wasps do not swarm, and that in summer time they are subject 

 to kings, and in winter the females prevaileth. And when they 

 have renewed and repaired their issue with a great supply, and 

 that they be fresh and lusty, the empire again returneth to the 

 masculine kind. 



" Wasps are not long-lived, for their dukes (who live longest) do not 

 exceed two years ; and the labouring, that is the male wasps, together 

 with autumn do end their days. Yea, which is more strange, whether 

 their dukes or captains of the former year, after they have ingendered 

 and brought forth new spring-up dukes, do die, together with the new 

 wasps, and whether this do come to passe after one and the self-same 

 order, or whether yet they do and may live any longer time, divers 

 men do diversly doubt." 



Our author informs us further, that there are two kinds of wasps, 

 one " wilde and fell," the other " meek and quiet ; " of the former kind 

 he once found a colony in Essex, in a wood, where, as he informs us, 

 " going unwarily to gather simples with another physitian, and 

 offending one of this furnish generation, the whole swarm of them 

 presently rushed forth about mine ears, and surely had I not had in 

 mine hand some sprigs or branches of broom for my defence, I had 

 undoubtedly paid dear for this my unadvisedness, if it had not cost me 

 my life, for they pursued me in every place in the wood, with a vehe- 

 ment rage, for a long season, insomuch that I was fain to take to my 

 heels, and so to seek to save myself from further danger. And if our 

 countryman Sir Francis Drake himself had been there, although he 

 was ' Omuium aucum nostri seculi fortissimus ac famosissimus,' yet I 

 make no doubt but he would have taken my part, and been a com- 

 panion with me in this my fearful flight." 



