HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



427 



labours. As the nest is often a foot and a half under ground, 

 it is requisite that a covered way should lead to its entrance. 

 This is excavated by the wasps, who are excellent miners, 

 and is often very long and tortuous, forming a beaten road 

 to the subterranean city, well known to the inhabitants, 

 though its entrance is concealed from incurious eyes. The 

 cavity itself, which contans the nest, is either the abandoned 

 habitation of moles or field-mice, or a cavern purposely dug 

 out by the wasps, which exert themselves with such industry 

 as to accomplish the arduous undertaking in a few days. 



When the cavity and entrance to it are completed, the next 

 part of the process is to lay the foundations of the city to be 

 included in it, which, contrary to the usual custom of 

 builders, wasps begin at the top, continuing downwards. I 

 have already told you that the coatings which compose the 

 dome are a sort of rough but thin paper, and that the rest of 

 the nest is composed of the same substance variously applied. 



Whence," you will inquire, " do the wasps derive it ? " 

 They are manufacturers of the article, and prepare it from a 

 material even more singular than any of those which have of 

 late been proposed for this purpose ; namely, the fibres of 

 wood.^ These they detach by means of their jaws from 

 window-frames, posts, and rails, &c., and when they have 

 amassed a heap of the filament, moisten the whole with a few 

 drops of a viscid glue from their mouth, and, kneading it with 

 their jaws into a sort of paste or papier mdche, fly off with it 

 to their nest. This ductile mass they attach to that part of 

 the building upon which they are at work, walking backwards 

 and spreading it into laminas of the requisite thinness by 

 means of their jaws, tongue, and legs. This operation is 

 repeated several times, until at length, by aid of fresh 

 supplies of the material and the combined exertion of so 

 many workmen, the proper number of layers of paper 

 that are to compose the roof is finished. This paper is as 

 thin as that of the letter which you are reading ; and you 



1 Reaumur says decaying wood, vi. 182. ; but White asserts (and my own 

 observations confirm his opinion) that wasps obtain their paper from sound tim- 

 ber ; hornets, only from that which is decayed. White's Nat. Hist, by Markwick, 

 ii. 228. 



