Insect architecture / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Insect architecture / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    fection of any art; animals go clearly to a given point—but they can go no further. We may, how- ever, learn something from their perfect | knowledge of what is within their range. It is not. improbable that if man had attended in.an earlier state of society to the labours of wasps, he would have sooner known how to make paper. We. are still behind in our _ arts and ‘sciences, because we have not always been observers. _ If we had watched the. operations of in- sects, and the structure of animals in general, with more care, we might have been far advanced in the knowledge of many arts, which are yet in their in- fancy, for nature has given us abundance of patterns. We have learnt to perfect some instruments of sound, by examining the structure of the human ear; ‘and the mechanism of an eye has’ suggested some ‘valu- able improvements in achromatic glasses. Réaumur has given avery interestirig account of the wasps of Cayenne, which hang their nests in trees.* Like the bird of Africa called the Loxia, they fabricate a perfect house, capable of containing many hundreds _ of their community, and suspend it on high out of the reach of attack. But the Cayenne wasp is a: more expert artist than the bird. He isa _ card- maker;—and travellers of veracity agree that the card with which he forms the exterior covering of his abode is so smooth, so strong, so uniform in its texture, and so white, that the most skilful manu- facturer, of this substance might be page of the work. The nest of the card-making” wasp is impervious to water.. It hangs upon the branch of a tree, as represented ir in the engraving; and those rain-drops * Memoires sur les Insectes, tom vi., mem. vil. See also Bonnet; vol. ee
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