314 AFFECTION OF INSECTS FOR THEIR YOUNG. 



eagerly set to work in constrLicting fresh cells, and in light- 

 ening the burden of their parent by assisting her in feeding 

 the grubs of other workers and females which are by this 

 time born. In a few weeks the society will have received 

 an accession of several hundred workers and many females, 

 which without distinction apply themselves to provide food for 

 the growing grubs, now become exceedingly numerous. With 

 this object in view, as they collect little or no honey from 

 flowers, they are constantly engaged in predatory expeditions. 

 One party will attack a hive of bees, a grocer's sugar hogs- 

 head, or other saccharine repository ; or, if these fail, the juice 

 of a ripe peach or pear. You will be less indignant than for- 

 merly at these audacious robbers now you know that self is 

 little considered in their attacks, and that your ravaged fruit 

 has supplied an exquisite banquet to the most tender grubs of 

 the nest, into whose extended mouths the successful marau- 

 ders, running with astonishing agility from one cell to another, 

 disgorge successively a small portion of their booty in the 

 same way that a bird supplies her young. ^ Another party 

 is charged with providing more substantial aliment for the 

 grubs of maturer growth. These wage war upon bees, flies, 

 and even the meat of a butcher's stall, and joyfully return to 

 the nest laden with the well-filled bodies of the former, or 

 pieces of the latter as large as they can carry. This solid 

 food they distribute in like manner to the larger grubs, which 

 may be seen eagerly protruding their heads out of the cells to 

 receive the welcome meal. As wasps lay up no store of food^, 

 these exertions are the task of every day during the summer, 

 fresh broods of grubs constantly succeeding to those which 

 have become pupse or perfect insects ; and in autumn, when 

 the colony is augmented to 20,000 or 30,000, and the grubs in 



1 See Willughby in Rai. Hist. Ins. 251. and Reaum. 



2 There are however exceptions to this rule, as in the nests of some species of 

 Polistes, which fix them to trees, &c., are found about a dozen cells filled with 

 honey at the time these nests contain cells destined to receive the larvae of females 

 and of males, which renders the opinion of M. I.epelletier de Saint- Fargeau 

 probable, that this honey is destined in part to nourish the former and to exer- 

 cise some influence on the development of their genital organs. Polistes Leche- 

 guana, found in Paraguay and Monte Video, also stores up honey as before men- 

 tioned (Lacordaire, Introd. a V Entom. ii. 511.), as does Myrapetra scutellaris. 

 White. {Ann. Nat. Hist. \n. 320.) 



