Evening star., 1901-07-03
THE FAMILY OF WASPS
A Queen ThaA Must he Killed In Spite
of Her Many Virtues-Vart0us
Interesting Species.

If the serpent Is mans oldest enemy the
wasp-whtch must have been a general null
sanee In the ark-eams second, for, search
antiquity as you may, you will find no good
word for the wasp. "Angry. spiteful.
''venomous," "vengeful' are the poets cpl
thets. so familiar by tradition as to have
beceme synonyms for "waspish'' nature:
and though the excellent Kirby and Spence
venture so Tar IN apology for the slim
wasted. hre-tailed brigand as to call him
brisk and lively" such half-praise is as
bad as blame. For man instinctively feels
that no room ever built was big enough for
him to share peacefully with a brisk and
lively wasp. Even our folklore. often
kindly to small life. bids us stay the first
wasp we see In spring for luck"
And this IS one Of those utilitarian pro-
verbs which suggest the authorship of
some far-seeing philanthropist of old. who
knew more and thought further than the
unborn generations which have superssi-
tiously followed his teaching for centuries;
in India the incredibly ancient decree of
sanctity to the COW seems to have been but
statesmanlike trick for preserving alive
the animal upon which the peoples exist
ence depends.
For why should 1T be lucky" to kill the
wasp in spring? Simply because one dex-
ferrous flip with handkerchief. one adroit
back-hander with the fiat Of a spade, then
achieves result which Is potentially equiv
alent to the laborious destruction of some
10000 wasps in the fruit season. For the
early wasp, whose buzZing flight along the
ground in the thin sunlight attunes our
hearts to sympathy as Sign of spring.
Is queen wasp, one Of the few survivors
OF some huge colony of the previous year:
and her very figure. with its solid sections
linked by threadlike waist, typifies the
stenderness of the connection in her soil
tary person of the pepulous wasp cities Of
successive years.
The Summons of Spring.
When our prophets. poets and philoso-
piers condescend to insect life for imprev-
ing precepts, they bid US either go to the
ant or observe the bee. Yet for sublimity
OF self-sacrif1cing labor and heroic devo-
tfon to posterity the whole range Of ma
ture holds no figure 80 queenly as that of
the queen wasp. Compared with her. the
much-vaunted queen bee Is a pampered
self; and II she did. she would only find
her majesty Of the ants to be an overfed
and bloated egg bag.
But the queen wasp asks nothing of her
people that she has not, singie-handed,
achieved herself. Last autumn she was
merely a female one Of huge. happy,
hard-working community; but now. when
the silky breath of spring draws her from
her long winters sleep, she finds herself
alone. shivering perhaps in one of the
many-cha mbered galleries where she and
thousands of her family were born and la
bored, but where now moldy silence
reignS. Perhaps her stffened limbs
cramped into crevice between brick wall
and hairy ivy stump, where dead leaves
tangled in a dusty cobweb made a most
unroyal chamber. yet one into which her
half-frozen majesty was glad to crawl on
that November afternoon when a shift of
the wind to the north caught her belated
on the Ivy bloom. the last resource of beg
CARED nsect-foIk.
Little ia in har
she crawls to the light OF unaccustomed
day. and dusts her legs in the weak spring
sunlight on the wall She is staggery about
the knees. too. and that first attempt at
flight lacks precision, for it lands her legs
upward on the gravel, where the gardener
may cheaply secure ''luck'' for the year
with one hobnailed stamp. If he does. her
story and the hopes Of large colony end
together.
Royal, hut Not Ashamed to Dig.
But If the fates are kind and the gar
dener unobservant, the queen picks her
self up. punctiliously corrects her toilet
and, with a buzzing swerve along the
gravel path. just misses the box-edgtng
and is of into space. Presently, the blood
now circulating healthtiy In every vein,
she calls to mind the mighty iabofs before
her. and commences prospecting for site
for the great wasp-metropolis whose exist
ence depends upon her unalded resolution
and industry.
Busily she quarters the ground, espe-
cially investigating banks or wooded slopes
likely places TO furnish In some caved-in
mouse hole snail pit the small begin
nings Of her underground city. Often she
aights and tests the capacity OF some
small creviee; sometimes, half-Eninded. size
tests It over and over again. flying away
and returning to see how 1t strikes her
afresh At last she finds hole to- her
mind. and proceeds at once to make the
necessary alterations. With feverish
ergy and tail restlessly quivering up and
down as though perpetually rehearstng the
part which it would play In defense Of the
home Of her choice. she plunges INTO the
hole repeatedly. emerging tail first and
pushing loose soii or rubbish out behind
her, or dragging out small clods and stones
in her jaws Earth-soiied and bustling. she
might be any low type Of agricultural In
sect. yet she Is queen.
And when the digging labor Is finished
she flies off, and, again quarterfng the
ground like trained spaniel, finds at last
some old stump or sill Of wood, some fallen
trunk or weatherworn wound in growing
timber. whereOn she settles and proceeds to
bite off bits of wood and chew them into
paste. With this she flies to the hole again,
and with jaws, and head. and feet molds
the thin-drawn paste into fine gray paper,
silky, strong and waterproof.
The Inventor of Woodruff Paper.
Here Is an invention-"paper from wood
puip''-which has been Uttered before the
blind eyes of man ever since in prehistoric
ages he first destroyed wasps' nests, but
was reserved to be his triumph at the
end of the nineteenth century Of our mod
ern era! OF the same paper she constructs
the outer walls of the nest, and some dozen
or SO of cells. in each of which she lays an
egg. From each egg presently emerges a
small grub. soft and feeble-bodfed. but
strong In jaw, and very, very hearty in ap
petite.
So all day long the queen slaves to fill
her children's stomachs until at last they
pass. full grown. to the transition staGs Of
''nymph or "pupa"-a kind of previous
mummy OF wasp-and thence IN due term
emerge-as princesses? No; the queen needs
no pampered idleness In her self-made pal
ace of mud and paper and her first batch
of children are sexless workers."
They have had their heyday Of greedy
idleness as grubs; now they live for labor.
and quickly the cluster of cells built by the
queen spreads to a full tier through their
ceaseless toll; from this. by pillars Of wood
pulp-of a tougher substance than the pa
per of walls or ceiis-another tier Of cells is
suspended: then more pillars and another
tier and 30 on, story below story, the wasp
city takes shape, and while the queen.