240 
TRANSFORMATIONS OF INSECTS. 
inch long, and it constructs its nest on the lower surfaces of palm 
leaves. The nest does not occupy much space, and the breadth of 
one leaf suffices. There is only one oval-shaped comb in the nest, 
and it is clothed in an envelope made of a rather fragile reddish- 
coloured paper, in which there is a small inferior aperture. The 
size of the cells of this comb is very minute, and does not reach 
to more than from the twenty-fifth to the twelfth of an inch. The 
regularity and the perfection of the construction of the cells are 
very wonderful, but the insects build so well, that although the 
palm leaves move with the wind, and sometimes very strongly 
so, the larvae are all safe within the delicate little nest. 
Some foreign species of wasps belonging to the genus Char- 
tergns , make their nests of a substance like pasteboard ; hence 
they are called Pasteboard Wasps. The nest of Chartergus nidn- 
lans , a native of Brazil, has a beautifully polished white appear- 
ance, and is so solid as to be impenetrable to the weather. 
Reaumur showed some of the substances of which these nests are 
composed to a cardboard manufacturer, who declared it to be 
most likely the produce of a particular manufactory at Orleans. 
Another wasp, a native of Brazil, which is a honey-making 
insect, is said to form its nest out of very different materials, for 
it collects the dried dung of a species of tapir, and moulds it into 
a rough sort of paper. 
A black wasp, which has smoky-coloured wings and a very 
large head, lives in Guiana, and is called the Armadillo Wasp 
( Tatna morio). Its nest is perhaps one of the most wonderful 
examples of intelligent design in insects that can be put forward. 
These wasps choose the straight and upright branches of a tree 
which has no lateral twigs, and they make it the axis or the 
support of the nest. The combs, which are composed only of a 
few cells, are fixed to the branch by means of a very solid mass of 
wax. They are separated by a considerable interval, are placed 
one over the other, and sometimes there are ten of them. In the 
accompanying engraving their numbers and mutual relations are 
very well shown. The walls of the nest are formed by a fusi- 
form envelope, made up of a woody paper, and marked with 
transverse tubings, which are, as it were, goffered. Moreover, this 
paper, the fibres of which are arranged with wonderful regularity, 
