"Very soon a number from the detachment which had ascended the mound, or lilliputian kopje, evidently the attacking party, entered the loose earth and speedily returned, each bearing a cricket or a young grasshopper, dead, which he deposited upon the ground and then returned for a fresh load. Those who had remained on the outside of the mound, took up the crickets and grasshoppers as they were brought out and bore them down to the base of the hill, returning at once for fresh victims. Soon the contents of the mound seemed to be exhausted, and then the whole force returned home, each ant carrying his burden of food for the community." * * * * * My very young readers will be surprised, no doubt, to hear me speak of wasps as cement-makers, or paper-makers, but such, in truth, they are. You can form no idea of the industry and toil these little folk expend upon the structure they call home. Nothing pleases them better than to find an old fence rail covered with a light gray fuzz of woody fiber loosened from decaying wood by excessive soakings of rain. Dozens of these little pulp-gatherers will descend upon the rail, and as fast as each of them obtains a load away he flies to the place where the home building is already going on. This may be in a clump of bushes near a stream, and as fast as they deposit their load of fiber down they fly to the stream, and having secured a mouthful of water back they go to the nest to beat the fiber into a thin sheet, which they deftly join to the main body, the jointure being imperceptible. Such a throng of workers coming and going, some to the fence, some to the nest, some to the brook, each addition to the structure being the tiniest mite, yet growing perceptibly under the united efforts of the little builders.