“It is at the end of May that these Wasps set to work; and one can see them busily labouring during the whole of June. Though their actual object is only to dig in the sand a hole a few inches deep and not much wider than their bodies, one might suppose that they had another end in view; for, to make this hole, they build on the outside a hollow tube, which has as its base the circumference of the entrance to the hole and which, after following a direction perpendicular to the surface containing that aperture, turns downwards. This tube becomes longer in proportion as the hole becomes deeper; it is built of the sand drawn from the hole; it is fashioned in coarse filigree, or a sort of guilloche. It is made of big, granular, winding fillets, which do not touch at all points. The gaps left in between make it look as if it were artistically constructed, whereas it is only a sort of scaffolding by means of which the mother’s tactics are rendered swifter and surer. “Though I knew these insects’ two teeth to be capital instruments, capable of breaking into very hard substances, the task which they had to perform appeared to me rather severe for them. The sand on which they had to act was scarcely less hard than ordinary stone; at least, one’s finger-nails made but a poor impression upon its outer layer, which the sun’s rays had dried more thoroughly than the rest. But, when I succeeded in observing these workers at the moment when they were beginning to bore a hole, they taught me that they did not need to subject their teeth to so harsh an ordeal. “I saw that the Wasp begins by softening the sand which she proposes to remove. Her mouth discharges upon it a drop or two of water, which is promptly swallowed by the sand, turning it instantly into a soft paste which her teeth scrape and remove without difficulty. Two of her legs, the foremost pair, immediately proceed to gather it into a little pellet, about the size of a currant-seed. It is with this pellet, the first one removed, that the Wasp lays the foundations of the tube which we have described. She carries her pellet of mortar to the edge of the hole which she has just made by removing it; her teeth and feet turn it about, flatten it and make it stand up higher than it did before. This done, the Wasp again sets about removing sand and loads herself with another pellet of mortar. Soon she contrives to have extracted enough sand to make the entrance of the hole perceptible and to have laid the foundation of the tube.