THE WASP. 
331 
had, they seek for the best and sweetest fruits, and they are 
never mistaken in their choice. From the garden they tly to 
the city, to the grocers’ shops, and butchers shambles. They 
will sometimes carry off bits of flesh hall as big ns themselves, 
with which they Hy to their nest for the nourishment of their 
brood. Those who cannot drive them away, lay for them a 
piece of ox’s liver, which being without fibres, they prefer to 
other flesh ; and wherever they are found, all other flies are 
seen to desert the place immediately. Such is the dread with 
which these little animals impress all the rest of the insect 
tribes, which they seize and devour without mercy, that ihey 
vanish at their approach. Wherever they fly, like the eagle 
or the falcon, they form a desert in the air around them. In 
this manner the summer is passed in plundering the neigh- 
bourhood, and rearing up their young; every day adds to 
their numbers; and from their strength, agility, and indis- 
criminate appetite for every kind of provision, were they as 
long lived as the bee, they would soon swarm upon the liice 
of nature, and become the most noxious plague of man : 
but providentially their lives are measured to their mischief, 
and they live but a single season. In proportion as the cold 
of the winter increases, they are seen to become more do- 
mestic ; they seldom leave the nest, they make but short 
adventures from home, they flutter about in the noon-day 
heats, and soon after return chilled and feeble. 
As their calamities increase, new passions soon begin to 
take place; the care for posterity no longer continues, and 
as the parents are no longer able to provide their growing 
progeny a supply, they take the barbarous resolution of 
sacrificing them, all to the necessity of the times. In this 
manner, like a garrison upon short allowance, all useless 
hands are destroyed; the young worms, which a little be- 
fore they fed and protected with so much assiduity, are now 
butchered and dragged from their cells. As the cold in- 
creases they no longer find sufficient warmth in their nests, 
which grow hateful to them, and they tly to seek it in the 
corners' of houses, and places that receive an artificial heat. 
But the winter is still insupportable; and, before the new 
year begins, they wither and die; the working wasps first, 
the males soon following, and many of the females suffering 
in the general calamity. In every nest, however, one or two 
females survive the winter, and having been impregnated 
by the male during the preceding season, she begins in 
spring to lay her eggs in a little hole of her own contrivance. 
This bundle of eggs, which is clustered together like grapes, 
soon produces two worms which the female takes proper 
