284 
DEFENSIO VESPARUM. 
“ Butcher, my custom is yours. I am desirous of dealing with you. 
Do not hesitate, foolish miser. Cut me a good slice of meat, and I will 
pay you for it; I will kill all your flesh-flies. Let us agree to be 
friends. We are both born to kill.” 
The slow dull animals of the genus Man are much scandalized at 
the proceedings of the wasp. It acts, it does not talk. But if it 
deigned to speak, its apology would be simple. A word would suffice. 
It is the being on whom Nature imposes the terrible destiny of sup¬ 
pressing time. We speak of the ephemera which lives a few hours: 
the period is sufficient for a creature that does nothing. The true 
ephemera is the wasp. In a brief six months’ summer (not more than 
four months of full activity) it has to accomplish, not only the cycle of 
the individual life—to be born, to eat, to love, to die—but, what is far 
more onerous, the cycle of a prolonged social life, the most complicated 
which any insect is required to perform. What the bee leisurely elabo¬ 
rates in several years, the wasp must realize immediately. Much more 
tha^n the bee ! For the latter makes its honeycombs in a completed 
house (the hive, the hollow of the rock, the trunk of a tree); but the 
wasp must improvise without as within, the ramparts of the city no 
less than the city itself. 
Four months to create everything, to make and unmake a people, 
and a people of lofty organization ! 
Learn, ye idle races which mutter that in fourscore years ye have 
no time, learn to despise it. It is a purely relative affair. There is 
never any time for the flat-bellied snail, were it to crawl through cen¬ 
turies. There is always time for heroic activity, firm will, and resolute 
energy. 
The wasp dies. Its city of thirty thousand souls, improvised by a 
revolution, as by a thundering stroke of genius and courage, subsists 
as a testimony to its labours. Solid, eminently substantial, conscien¬ 
tiously wrought, and seemingly intended for eternity! 
Let us note the starting-point. 
A miserable fly, which in winter has survived the destruction of 
its race, issues all a-dust from its hiding-place. Thank Heaven, it is the 
