In the house, she puts a baby wasp. She puts in little spiders for him to eat. A hornet is a kind of wasp. We may call him Mrs. Wasp’s cousin. Hornets catch and eat flies. There is a black wasp that is called a mud-dauber. She builds a little mud house. I know a boy who broke one of these mud houses thirty-two times. The wasp built it up each time. One of these mud-wasps built a house ten times on a man’s desk. Each time that he broke it up, she built it again. This kind of wasp does not leave her baby alone. LESSON XIII. A LOOK AT MRS. WASP. Mrs. Wasp’s color is blue-black. She has yellow marks. She has four thin wings. Two are large and two are small. The front wings are the large ones. Her wings lie close to her sides when her body is at rest. The wasp looks as if she had two wings, not four. The two under ones are hooked to the upper ones. Her eyes are set close to her head. They are large. They have a notch or dent in them. She has two long wands, called feelers, on her head. They are made in joints. She touches things with them. Her body is in three parts. The first part is the head, with the eyes and mouth. The next part is thick and short. The hind part is long and slim. These two join at a point. It looks as if the hind part might drop off, but it never does. Mrs. Wasp has a long, sharp sting in her tail. The wasp’s sting is like two fine saws. A drop of poison runs through it from a bag. You need not fear Mrs. Wasp. She does not sting if you let her alone. She has six legs. The legs and wings are set on the part of the body that is next the head. She uses her front legs for hands. The body of the wasp is hard, and made of rings like scales. Mrs. Wasp uses her jaws to cut up wood for paper. She does not need them to eat with. She eats honey. When her baby eats spiders and caterpillars, it does not chew them. It sucks out their juice. Wasps bite fruit and spoil it. They are cross, and fight. They kill bees for their honey. All wasps are not of the same color. The wasp that leaves her baby alone is the hermit wasp. There is a wasp of a rust-red color. LESSON XIV. MRS. WASP’S YEAR. I will now tell you of a wasp that does not live alone. This Mrs. Wasp takes good care of her babies. She is called the social wasp. While it is winter Mrs. Wasp hides. She does not like the cold. [Illustration: ROOMS TO LET.] Most wasps die in the winter. Only a few live to come out in the spring. The first thing Mrs. Wasp does in the spring is to build a new house. She does not use an old house. She puts her eggs into the house, with some food. When the young wasps grow up, and come out, they help build. More cells are put into the house. An egg is laid in each cell. The egg grows into a grub. The wasps feed the grub. They bring it honey. The baby wasp has no wings nor feet. It has to be shut up, to grow into a true wasp. When the time comes, the wasps put a wax lid upon the cell.