Marvels of the Universe 



125 



The queen's husband never 

 sees the thousands of citizens 

 of which he is the father ; in- 

 deed, he never sees the begin- 

 ning and early stages of a city 

 at all. He appears at the end of 

 the summer, when the city is at 

 the zenith of its glory, and 

 when certain marriageable 

 daughters have been born to 

 the community from which he 

 can select a wife. His function 

 in life then ha\ing been ful- 

 filled, he perishes, together with 

 all the busy workers of the city 

 in which he was born. Only the 

 young queens are able to sur- 

 vive the winter and become the 

 mothers of new communities. 



Just how the above events 

 come about need not concern 

 us here, as this article is 

 preliminary to another, where 

 I shall be able to consider 

 the habits and home-life of 

 the wasp in detail. My pre- 

 sent consideration is of the 

 wasp individuals themselves, 

 and, as we have seen, they 

 consist of (i) the large-bodied 

 female known as the queen, (2) 

 the small-bodied imperfect 

 females known as the workers, 

 and (3) the slender-bodied 

 males or drones with long 

 feelers. '° ^^' "^'" °' "• 



Both the queen and the worker-wasps are endowed in a marvellous degree with the maternal 

 instinct. They are veritable slaves to nest-building and the rearing of the young. Consequently, 

 Nature has provided them with some wonderfully-made tools to carry on these functions. 



When we see a wasp on a wooden paling biting and tugging at its fibres, it is difficult to 

 reahze the strength that it is exerting in its efforts to bite and tear off a shred of the wood. Even 

 if we look closely at its mouth-parts we can only observe its tiny jaws working persistently upon 

 the wood, until at last a clean portion is revealed, showing that some of the fibres have been torn 

 away, as shown in our photograph. 



That portion of wood is then worked up in the complex machinery of the wasp's mouth and 

 mixed with a gummy secretion, until at last a paper-pulp is produced, which is then spread out 

 into a thin layer, and added either to the outer walls of the city or to the tiers of cells within. 

 Just how the paper is manufactured, and what tools are employed in its production, we cannot 

 quite understand ; but a glance at the mechanism of the mouth-parts through a microscope reveals 



J'/tOf(J t:.] 



Th. 



a sKeatH in which 



A WASP'S STING. 



ound is made by ihe darU object to the left of the picture 

 oves the sharper sting, here shown rer 



[J. J. Ward. 



ut this is only 

 oved from the sheath and 



