Some species are said to sting the drones and larvæ to death at the close of the season, but this habit is not followed by V. germanica and V. maculata. Since there is no store of provision to be economized through the winter the only object of such conduct would be the merciful one of ending their sufferings at once instead of letting them perish by slow starvation, and we find no evidence for such elevated ideas. What makes for the welfare of the species they thoroughly attend to, but beyond that point they do not go. The socialism of wasps is in a less evolved state than that of bees and ants, and yet there is in it sufficient sacrifice of self to the common good to excite the respectful wonder of human beings, whose relations to each other and to the state have such different standards. Chapter II AMMOPHILA AND HER CATERPILLARS BEFORE we had worked long on our Vespa family we were beguiled by tempting opportunities into running after the solitary wasps. The solitaries, so far as species are concerned, are immensely more numerous than the socials; but they have only two sexes, and the males and females usually see but little of each other after the mating is over, although we occasionally find them living happily together until the end of the season. In the early summer they begin to emerge from the nest in which the eggs were laid the year before. Solitary indeed they come into the world, the generation that gave them birth having perished in the fall. For a time their career is one of unmixed pleasure, and yet, free and unguided though they are, basking in the sunshine, feeding on the flowers, or sleeping at night under some sheltering leaf, they are hourly acquiring experience, so that when the cares of life descend upon them they are no longer creatures of mere instinct. With these sobering cares an almost absurdly heavy sense of responsibility for future generations transforms the hitherto happy–go–lucky females into grown–up wasps with serious views on marketing and infant foods. Each one makes a separate nest and provisions it by her own labor; and in many cases a new nest is made for each egg. There is no coöperation among them; although in certain genera, as Aphilanthops and Bembex, a number of individuals build close together, forming a colony. The nests may be made of mud, and attached for shelter under leaves, rocks, or eaves of buildings, or may be burrows hollowed out in the ground, in trees or in the stems of plants. The adult wasp lives upon fruit or nectar, but the young grub or larva must have animal food; and here the parent wasp shows a rigid conservatism, each species providing the sort of food that has been approved by its family for generations, one taking flies, another bugs, and another beetles, caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, spiders, cockroaches, aphides, or other creatures, as the case may be.