148 LITTLE FOLKS 
Here is a picture of the Gadfly babies in their egg cradles, all 
fixed to the horse's hairs. 
There's one family of insects, I'm sorry to say, who get 
comfortable homes, and food for their babies, by stealing into nests 
that honest mothers have built. When the grubs are all hatched 
out, the little thief eats up all the rest. 
Did you ever see a Sand Wasp? She is a very hard-working 
mother. She digs a hole in the hard sand, and actually drags to it 
a big caterpillar or spider, ever so much bigger than she is, which 
she has bitten in such a way that it is helpless. When she has it 
safely in the nest she lays her eggs on it, and then covers it up 
with dirt. When the grub comes out of the egg y there is a feast 
all ready for it. 
Another of this Wasp family, the Mason Wasp, having prepared 
her nursery, gathers about a dozen small grubs or worms, and packs 
them in alive, for food for the baby. Perhaps you think that the 
grubs would eat up the egg; but the careful little mother looks 
out for that, and packs the grubs in coils, or rings, so tightly that 
they can't move. 
If I had to be packed away in a cradle, to grow by myself, I'd 
rather have the bee mother do it. She provides no grubs or cater- 
pillars for food, but delicious honey, which I should like better. 
One of the coziest nurseries arranged by these little mothers 
is in a nut. She makes a hole in a green nut, hickory or chestnut, 
and packs the egg in, snug and warm. The grub hatches out and 
just feeds on the sweet nut, till you crack it open some day, and he 
crawls out. If the nut had been left to fall from the tree, he would 
have crept out and buried himself in the ground, till his wings 
grew. 
But not all the little mothers die so soon as these. Some can 
take care of their babies themselves. 
Some of the Wasps not only give the baby a caterpillar to begin 
on, but every day or two they take a fresh one and put it in the 
nursery, till the baby is grown. 
Another little mother, the Saw Fly, sits on the leaf where her 
eggs are, till they are hatched. Then she feeds them, and shelters 
them from the sun with her wings, for five or six weeks, till they 
are grown up. 
But the most attentive little bug mother, is a Field Bug. She 
leads ., her troop of babies around, as a hen leads her chickens, and 
