BY THE WAYSIDE. 
39 
About Some Wasps. 
I suppose any country boy would know all 
about such things, but in the city a fellow 
doesn’t learn anything interesting, and so I al¬ 
ways thought that wasps were either yellow- 
jackets or hornets, and lived in big nests all 
together, and when you threw a stone at a 
nest and they all came zizzing out it was 
fun if they didn’t catch on to who did it, and 
when I found out that there were about a 
thousand kinds of wasps that lived all alone, 
each one by itself, I didn’t know how to 
believe it. I got interested in them this way. 
I was moseying round the boat-house one day 
and I happened to notice a little thing with 
brownish wings that kept coming and coming, 
every minute or two, and creeping under an old 
bathing suit that hung there. Finally I pull¬ 
ed it away from the wall and looked, and here, 
fastened to the flannel, were some tiny little 
tuoes made out of mud. Two of them were 
shut at both ends, but the other wasn’t quite 
finished. I called my Aunt Sally to look and 
she said that the little thing was a wasp, 
named Agenia, and that she was making nests 
for her babies. I thought I would watch and 
see what happened, and after awhile Agenia 
came running along over the floor with a 
spider in her mouth. She crammed it into the 
nest, and it was a tight fit, and then she laid 
an egg on it, and then she brought little 
crumbs of dirt and closed up the end of the 
nest. I thought this was pretty wonderful, 
but when I began to hunt for them I found 
queer wasps everywhere. Of course Aunt Sally 
helped me and told me about them. Wouldn’t 
you think the mother-wasp would look after 
i the young ones? No. She lays an egg and 
puts in something for it to eat, and then she 
i is done with it. When it hatches it isn’t a 
wasp but a little wormy thing, and after it 
has eaten up the spider, or whatever its mother 
has given it (different kinds have different 
things for dinner) it spins itself up the same 
way a catapillar does, and then it changes 
: into a wasp. Now the lohesomest thing I ever 
heard of is that new wasp when it gnaws it- 
j self out. Nobody to welcome it, no mother, 
nor grandmother, nor aunt to tell it what to 
do, no society to take an interest in it, not 
I even an orphan asylum. You’d think it would 
be discouraged enough to lie down and die, 
but instead of that it goes ahead and does 
everything that it ought to do quite nicely. It 
I knows what to eat and what kind of a nest 
- 
it ought to make, and what particular thing it 
must catch for its young ones. How does it 
knowf Its brain is no bigger than a pin head. 
They say instinct, but that doesn’t tell you 
anything. Wliat is instinct? 
These wasps kill all sorts of things. A good 
many of them take spiders, and I’m sorry for 
that, they are so pretty and interesting, but 
“they chiefly use their charm on creatures that 
do people harm,” as the Pied Piper said. I 
think they must be nearly as useful as birds, 
and ought to be protected by the Audubon So¬ 
ciety. There is one kind with yellow marks, 
named Cerceris that lives in the vegetable gar¬ 
den and takes all sorts of beetles that injure 
things; and another, a very thin one with a 
red belt, takes hundreds of caterpillars that 
the farmers want to get rid of. Others take 
flies and bugs and plant-lice and crickets and 
grasshoppers and most everything. There is 
one that makes its nest in straws, so you can 
see it is pretty small, and some go into rasp¬ 
berry stalks, and holes in trees, and lots of 
them dig in the ground. I saw a cunning little 
black one with white spots, named Pompilus, 
digging in the ground, and how she did kick! 
The dirt just fairly flew! She dug down out 
of sight. Then when the hole was done she 
flew to a weed, and there, all the time, her 
spider had been hanging. Just as she came for 
it an ant was tackling it by one leg, thinking 
to carry it off, and gee, whiz! how Mrs. Pom¬ 
pilus pounced on that ant! Mad wasn’t the 
name for it! The reason that the spider hung 
there waiting so patient and nice was that she 
had stung it and it could not move a bit. 
Well, after she had sent the ant flying, she 
took it into the nest and in a minute she came 
out and filled up the hole, and swept all the 
loose dirt away, and brought some sticks and 
pebbles and dead flowers to scatter around and 
make things look natural. It was pretty to 
see, I can tell you. 
When I think I’ve got to go back to school 
next week and learn to diagram sentences, and 
figure how many minutes since George Wash¬ 
ington died, and such rubbish, when I might 
be here in Delafield finding out about real 
things, it makes me tired! T. $. 
A Hungry Customer. 
Quoth the Lion, “My mane is a bore, 
For I live in a tropical clime. 
I have called upon barbers galore, 
But they never can get through in time!” 
— Selected. 
