Insect architecture / [Anon].

  • James Rennie
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    wasps do not, like mason-bees, ever make use of the same nest for more than one season. Both Réaumur and the younger Huber: studied the proceedings of the common wasp in the manner which has been so successful in observing bees—by means of glazed hives, and other contrivances. In this, these naturalists were greatly aided by the ex- treme affection of wasps for their young; for though their nest is carried off, or even cut in various direc- tions, and exposed to the light, they never desert it, nor relax their attention to their progeny. When a wasp’s nest is removed from its natural situation, and covered with a glass hive, the first operation of the inhabitants. is to repair the injuries it has suffered. They carry off with surprising activity all the earth or other matters which have fallen- by accident into the nest; and when they have got it thoroughly cleared of everything extraneous, they begin to se- cure it from further derangement, by fixing it to the glass with papyraceous. columns, similar’ to those which: we have already described. ‘The breaches which the nest may have suffered are then repaired, and the thickness of the walls is augmented, with the design, perhaps, for more coy excluding the light. The nest of the hornet is nearly the same in struc- ture with that of the wasp; but the materials are considerably: coarser, and the columns to which the platforms of cells are suspended are larger and stronger, the middle one being twice as thick as any of the others. ‘The hornet, also, does not build under ground, but in the “cavities of trees, or in the thatch or under the eaves of barns. Réaumur once found upon a wall a hornet’s nest which had not been long begun, and had: it transferred to the outside of his study window; but in consequence,
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