The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-09-07

twice, and carries 1t off in the grasp Of
her mouth and fore feet-not, however,
directly to her home.
The wasp now alights on some conven-
lent spot where she rolls her captive
about until she has it in the desired posi-
ton, and then she deliberately stings 1t
to death.
Having done this, she grabs it up, flies
to her little mud cell, where she stuffs the
dead spider down into the bottom of the
chamber. Then she rushes away for. an
other. No spider is too large for her use.
None are so big as to scare her
Thus in two or three hours of July aft
ernoon she will pack soIidly into her cell
ten or twenty spiders, big and little, I'M
til at last it can hold only one more.
Having caught this last one. the wasp
pauses on her threshold and performs the
browning act for which all that has gone
before has been simply a preparation.
She deposits and CLUES single egg upon
the abdomen of this latest victim, and
then crowding 1t on top of the rest, con-
cludes her labors by bringing mud and
sealing the chamber as tightly as possible.
The mother-wasp how departs leaving
her sealed home to its fate. The next
day. however, she returns and builds and
stocks second chamber close beside 1t.
This work she continues until she has her
number of cells complete -e
With the mother-wasp's Insurance Of
food and shelter for her young until they
come of age, her responsibility is at an
end
Now, what takes place in that dark,
sealed mud chamber?
In two or three days, according to the
temperature, the egg matches, and a tiny
white grub energies, which at once be-
gins to feed upon the nearest spider, eat
ing the soft parts first, then proceeding
to the next and so on, taking the tidbits
of its store first, and eating the harder
parts later.
By this time ten days have passed, and
the grub has grown nearly as big as It's
room. It feels, then, that the time has
come for change, and spins about it
capsule-shaped cocoon of glutinous silk.
in which 1t slumbers quietly for several
days as chrysalis until perfected.
Then 1t wakes, bursts it's cerements,
its nursey prison. and energies into the
world as brilliant wasp. 1t is at first
limp and hardly able to fly yet it knows
perfectly well how to sting you II you
arouse its easy anger.
Now you ask. how did the mother-wasp
know what to do2
She was born the previous summer, too
late to be taught the method of building
adobe houses. There was no one to teach
her architecture, nor to suggest the
proper time and place, or even the need
for doing such work. Yet at just the
proper season the insect collected the ma
terials, and accomplished her task as
neatly and effectively as had her dead
and-gone mother and grandmothers.
themselves guided only by that Unborn
knowledge we term instinct
This extraordinary instinct has many
parallels in other animals, who know in
tuitively how to make homes for them
selves or nests for the care Of their
young
How can the wasp foresee (if she does)
the end Of all preparations-to come in
which she will take no part? Why must
she lay up spiders, and only spiders, while
other wasps are content with nothing but
flies, and still others with caterpillars, or
plant lice, or something else?-for the