332 
NATURAL HISTORY. 
precaution to defend and supply, and these when hatched 
soon give assistance to the female, who is employed in 
hatching two more ; these also gathering strength, extricate 
themselves out of the web that incloses them ; and become 
likewise assistants to their mother : fifteen days after, two 
more make their appearance, thus is the community every 
day increasing, while the female lays in every cell, first a 
male and then a female. These soon after become breeders 
in turn, till, from a single female, ten thousand wasps are 
seen produced before the month of J une. 
The Hornet is one of the largest and most remarkable 
species of the wasp. It is twice as large as the common 
wasp, and is also distinguished by a black breast, and double 
black spots on the belly; the head is also longer and slen- 
derer, and the eyes somewhat resembling a half moon. It is 
extremely bold and venomous. Its predominant passion i3 
for flesh, and when hungry two or three of them will seize 
upon a small bird, kill it and devour its flesh. — Nay, it has 
even been said, that singly, it will attack and conquer a spar- 
row. In all its manners and habits, it entirely resembles 
the wasps we have been describing. 
Such is the history of the social wasp ; but, as among 
bees, so also among these insects, there are various tribes 
that live in solitude: these lay their eggs in a hole lor the 
purpose, and the parent dies long before the birth of its 
offspring. In the principal species of the Solitary Wasps, 
the insect is smaller than the working wasp of the social 
kind. The filament, by which the corslet is joined to the 
body, is longer and more distinctly seen, and the whole 
colour of the insect is blacker than in the ordinary kinds. 
But it is not the figure, but the manners of this extraor- 
dinary insect that claim our principal regard. 
From the end of May to the beginning of July, this wasp 
is seen most diligently employed. The whole purpose of its 
life seems to be in contriving and fitting up a commodious 
apartment for its young one, which is not to succeed it till 
the year ensuing. For this end, it is employed, with unwea- 
ried assiduity, in boring a hole into the finest earth some 
inches deep, but not much wider than the diameter of its 
own body. This is but a gallery leading to a wider apartment 
clestined for the convenient lodgment of its young. As it 
always chooses a gravelly soil to work in, and where the 
earth is almost as hard as stone itself, the digging and hol- 
lowing this apartment is an enterprise of no small labour; 
for effecting its operations, this insect is furnished with two 
teeth, which are strong and firm, but not sufficiently hard to 
