We have ourselves frequently seen wasps employed in procuring their materials in this manner, and have always observed that they shift from one part to another more than once in preparing a single load--a circumstance which we ascribe entirely to the restless temper peculiar to the whole order of hymenopterous insects. Réaumur found that the wood which they preferred was such as had been long exposed to the weather, and is old and dry. White of Selborne, and Kirby and Spence, on the contrary, maintain that wasps obtain their paper from sound timber, hornets only from that which is decayed.[W] Our own observations, however, confirm the statement of Réaumur with respect to wasps, as, in every instance which has fallen under our notice, the wood selected was very much weathered; and in one case, an old oak post in a garden at Lee, in Kent, half destroyed by dry-rot, was seemingly the resort of all the wasps in the vicinity. In another case, the deal bond in a brick wall, which had been built thirty years, is at this moment (June, 1829) literally striped with the gnawings of wasps, which we have watched at the work for hours together. (J. R.)
[Different species of wasps use different materials for their nest. _Vespa vulgaris_ always uses decayed wood, while _V. germanica_ and other species use sound wood. Owing to the colour, the distinction between the nests of these insects is evident at a glance.
The bundles of ligneous fibres thus detached are moistened before being used, with a glutinous liquid, which causes them to adhere together, and are then kneaded into a sort of paste, or _papier maché_.
The method employed by the wasp in making its nest has been so admirably described by Mr. S. Stone, that we cannot do better than copy his description, which appeared in "Beeton's Annual" of 1865.
"Having found a place suitable--the deserted burrows of the field-mice being perhaps more generally selected than any other by the underground species, the chamber formed by that animal for its nest being exactly the kind of place required by the insect--it proceeds to attach its web to the centre of the roof of the chamber. This consists, in the first instance, of a pedicle, or footstalk, about half an inch in length, at the extremity of which a single cell is formed, which is presently surrounded by others.