This indifference to dress is a bad sign. Two or three days later, in fact, the dusty female leaves the nest for the last time and goes on the roof, to enjoy yet a little of the sunlight; then, her nerveless claws relinquishing their hold, she slides quietly to the ground and does not get up again. She declines to die in her beloved paper home, where the code of the Wasps ordains absolute cleanliness. If the neuters, those fierce hygienists, were still there, they would seize the helpless creature and drag her outside. Themselves the first victims of the winter evil, they are lacking; and the dying Wasp proceeds to perform her own funeral rites by dropping herself into the charnel-pit at the bottom of the cavern. For reasons of health, an indispensable condition with such a multitude, these stoics refuse to die in the actual house, among the combs. The last survivors retain this repugnance to the very end. For them it is a law which never falls into disuse, however greatly reduced the population may be. No corpse can be allowed to remain in the babies’ dormitory. My cage becomes emptier day by day, notwithstanding the mild temperature of the room, notwithstanding the saucer of honey at which the able-bodied come to sip. At Christmas I have only a dozen females left. On the 6th of January, with snow out of doors, the last of them perishes. Whence arises this mortality, which mows down the whole of my Wasps? My attentions have preserved them from the calamities which at first sight might appear to cause their death under the usual conditions. Fed upon honey and grapes, they have not suffered from famine: warmed by the heat of my fire, they have not suffered from cold; cheered almost daily by the sun’s rays and living in their own nest, they have not suffered from home-sickness. Then what have they died of? I can understand the disappearance of the males. These are henceforth useless; the pairing has taken place and the eggs are fertile. I can less easily explain the death of the neuters, who, on the return of spring, would be of such great assistance when new colonies are founded. What I do not understand at all is the death of the females. I had nearly a hundred; and not one has survived the first few days of the new year. Having left their nymphal cells in October and November, they still possessed the vigorous attributes of youth; they represented the future; yet this sacred quality of prospective motherhood has not saved them. Even as the feeble males retired from business, even as the workers exhausted by labour, they too have succumbed. We must not blame their internment under wire for their death. The same thing happens in the open country. The various nests inspected at the end of December all reveal a similar mortality. The females die almost as rapidly as the rest of the population.