The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-07-17
HAVEN MORNING WEDNESDAY JULY n 1901

warm, dry retreats, where they can be I safe for the winter. Two or three may go back into the old nest, and others hide in holes in the ground, under the roots of trees, and in such like places. When one of these queens wakes up in the spring, she is very hungry after her long fast, and naturally the first thing she does is to get breakfast. First, perhaps, she will catch a fly on the wing, and then alight to eat it, holding it with her front feet and turn ing it over and over, much in the same way as squirrel handles a nut Then she may fly off to some tree to sip the juice as 1t flows from wound made by an axe, or by the bill of woodpecker, perhaps After she hae satisfied her hunger she turns her thoughts to the serious life work she has before her. She has not only to found a city, but to people ita stupendous task for one little lady, and a widow at that. First of all she selects a site and then begins by making few cells and laying an egg in each.
 Before long, white legless grubs are A'N''NNANN' dition to her other work, the queen has to feed these children. She brings them up on insects, which she first cheWs very small.
 She will often capture fly on the wing, and, after alighting with her prey, she will clip off its legs and wings with her scissor-lilSe jaws. Perhaps she does not consider these limbs very nourishing or very dlgestible. Then she covers the fly with saliva from her mouth, rolls it up into ball, and flies back to the nest to feed the babies. The latter soon develop into full-grown hornets, and, all being daughters, they are ready at once to lend hand with the llousework. While they have been growing. more eggs have been deposi- ted and more grubs matched, so now the older children help their mother by feeding their younger sisters, and also by enlarging the nest, leaving her free to lay eggs in the new cells which are being made.
 The industrious little creatures may often be seen on old picket fences, clapboards, stumps and posts, biting off the partly decayed gray wood, to make their nests with. This wood, cheWed up with their saliva, make a sort of pulp, which ill some ingenious way they work out into the paper which forms the wall of their home.
 Rapidly the nest grows in size, and the little colony, which began with single individual, in a few weeks be- comes a populous city. And not the least curious thing about the popula- tion is that there are no males includ- ed in it. This is community where the ladies, have everything their own way, and it must be admitted that all the affairs are most admirably con- ducted. All the eggs matched so far have produced workers" that is modi- fled females, which look somewhat like the queen, but which are smaller, and which never lay eggs. Late in the sea- son, however. few eggs are laid, some of which produce males and the rest true females or queens. Mating takes place amongst the members of this last brood, but after brief married life the males politely die, and leave the city once more in charge of the female. But the cold weather is now at hand, and the workers also die, leaving the fertile queens alone to live through the winter and to found new colonies the following year
 ERNEST HAROLD BAYNEs.