
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 
225 

NOTES ON THE WASP. 
THE WASP A PAPER MANUFACTURER. 
Look at this Wasp’s nest. What wisdom it displays ! 
What power ; what unfathomable perfection ! 

HILST on A RECENT TOUR 
(described inanother place), 
we paid a visit to the 
country mansion of some 
valued friends of ours, near 
Southampton. Mention- 
ing, in the course of con- 
versation, that we had been applied to for 
information about Wasps, and the paper 
fabric of which their nests were composed, 
we were shown, in an adjoining room, the 
very thing we were in search of—a wasp’s 
nest. 
Under a glass shade, on the table, there 
lay a most beautifully-constructed paper 
nest, made by these ingenious creatures; also 
(under another shade), the nest of a hornet 
family—a splendid paper fabric of gigantic 
proportions. 
Finding that these matters were made a 
“study” here, we asked our indulgent cor- 
respondent, ‘‘ Heartsease”’ (a member of this 
“happy family’’), if she would kindly furnish 
us with the information wanted. She most 
readily undertook to do so, and it has come 
to hand. We give it in her own words :— 

I send you, my dear sir, the promised particulars 
of the wasp—its nest, and the materiel of which 
it is composed, resembling papier maché. I have 
been as brief as the subject would admit of, but 
have reserved many further interesting details for 
a future paper. 
The nest of the common wasp (Vespa vulgaris) 
attracts, more or less, the attention of everybody ; 
but its interior architecture is not so well known 
as it deserves to be, for its singular ingenuity, in 
which it rivals even that of the hive-bee (Apis 
mellifica). In their general economy, the social 
or republican wasps closely resemble the humble- 
bee (Bombus),; every colony being founded by a 
single female who has survived the winter—to the 
rigors of which all her summer associates of males 
and working wasps uniformly fall victims. Nay, 
out of three hundred females which may be found 
in one vespiary, or wasp’s nest, towards the close 
of autumn, scarcely ten or a dozen survive till 
the ensuing spring, at which season they awake 
from their hybernal lethargy, and begin with 
ardor the labors of colonisation. 
It may be interesting to follow one of these 
mother-wasps through her several operations ; in 
which she merits more the praise of industry than 
the queen of a bee-hive—who does nothing, and 
never moves without a numerous train of obedient 
retainers, always ready to execute her commands 
and to do her homage. The mother-wasp, on the 
contrary, is at first alone, and is obliged to perform 
every species of drudgery herself. 
Her first care, after being roused to activity by 
the returning warmth of the season, is to discover 
a place suitable for her intended colony ; and, 

accordingly, in the spring, wasps may be seen 
prying into every hole of a hedge-bank, particularly 
where field-mice have burrowed. Some authors 
report that she is partial to the forsaken galleries 
of the mole; but this, says Rennie, does not 
accord with our observations, as we have never 
met with a single vespiary in any situation likely 
to have been frequented by moles. But though 
we cannot assert the fact, we think it highly 
probable that the deserted nest of the field-mouse, 
which is not uncommon in hedge-banks, may be 
sometimes appropriated by a mother-wasp, as an 
excavation convenient for her purpose. Yet, if 
she does make choice of the burrow of a field- 
mouse, it requires to be afterwards considerably 
enlarged in the interior chamber, and the entrance 
gallery very much narrowed. 
The desire of the wasp to save herself the 
labor of excavation—by forming her nest where 
other animals, have burrowed, is not without a 
parallel in the actions of quadrupeds, and even of 
birds. In the splendid Continuation of Wilson’s 
American Ornithology, by Charles L. Bonaparte, 
there is an interesting example of this instinctive 
adoption of the labors of others. ‘In the trans- 
Mississippian territories of the United States, the 
burrowing owl resides exclusively in the villages 
of the marmot, or prairie-dog, whose excavations 
are so commodious as to render it unnecessary 
that the,owl should dig for himself, as he is said 
to do where no burrowing animals exist.* The 
villages of the prairie-dog are very numerous and 
variable in their extent—sometimes covering 
only a few acres, and at others spreading over 
the surface of the country for miles together. 
They are composed of slightly-elevated mounds, 
having the form of a truncated cone, about two 
feet in width at the base, and seldom rising as 
high as eighteen inches from the surface of the 
soil. The entrance is placed either at the top, or 
on the side, and the whole mound is beaten down 
externally ; especially at the summit, resembling 
amuch-used footpath. From the entrance, the 
passage into the mound descends vertically, for 
one or two feet, and is thence continued obliquely 
downwards, until it terminates in an apartment, 
within which the industrious prairie-dog con- 
structs, on the approach of cold weather, a com- 
fortable cell for his winter’s sleep. The cell, 
which is composed of fine dry grass, is globular 
in form, with an opening at top, capable of 
admitting the finger; and the whole is so firmly 
compacted that it might without injury be rolled 
over the floor.” + 
In case of need, the wasp is abundantly fur- 
nished by nature with instruments for excavating 
a burrow out of the solid ground, as she no doubt 
most commonly does—digging the earth with her 
strong mandibles, and carrying it off or pushing 
it out as she proceeds. The entrance-gallery is 
about an inch or less in diameter, and usually 
runs in a winding or zig-zag direction, from one 
to two feet in depth. In the chamber to which 
* The owl observed by Vieillot in St. Domingo, 
digs itself a burrow two feet in depth, at the 
bottom of which it deposits its eggs upon a bed of 
moss. 
+ American Ornithology, by Charles Lucien 
Bonaparte, vol. i., p. 69. | 
Vou. IV.—15. 

