

374 THE INSECT WORLD. 
senting to their nurslings, very nearly in the same way 
as birds give their beak full of food to their little ones. At 
the end of three weeks the larvae cease to take food, and 
begin to shut themselves up in their cells, the interior of which 
they line with a coating of silk. In this they change their form, 
and assume the appearance of the perfect insect, with 
its six legs and its wings, but motionless, and con- 
tracted together. A sort of bag keeps all the organs 
swathed up together (Fig. 349). This pupa state lasts 
He ene for eight or nine days, at the end of which time the 
nt common insect is fully developed; it casts its skin, breaks the 
door of its prison, and launches itself into the air. A 
cell is no sooner abandoned than a worker visits, cleans it, and 

puts it in a fit state to receive another egg. 
During the summer the female wasp remains constantly in the 
nest, absorbed with family cares. She is occupied in laying eggs 
and in feeding her progeny, with the active assistance of the 
workers, or mules, as Réaumur and Charles de Geer call them, 
because they are unfruitful. 
In the interior of the nests you generally find the most perfectly 
good understanding existing, and the most perfect order, in spite of 
the warlike instincts of these insects. It is only on rare occasions 
that this domestic peace is disturbed by the quarrels of male with 
male or worker with worker; but these combats are not deadly. 
Never, moreover, has one nest of wasps been known to declare 
war against another for the purpose of robbing it. ‘The govern- 
ment of wasps,” says M. Victor Rendu, “explains very well the 
gentleness of their public conduct. Amongst them there are no 
despots; no one either reigns or governs; each one lives at 
liberty ina free city, on the sole condition of never being a 
burden to the state. They all act in concert, without privileges 
or monopolies, under the influence of a common law—the great 
law of the public good, from which no one is exempted.” * 
But this model republic is fatally doomed to early destruction. 
At the approach of winter all the workers, as also all the males, 
perish. Some pregnant females alone hold out against the cold, and 
get through the winter, to propagate and perpetuate their species. 
* “TY? Intelligence des Bétes.”” In 18mo. Paris, 1864. 


