The wasp is a paper-maker, and a most perfect and intelligent one. While mankind were arriving, by slow degrees, at the art of fabricating this valuable substance, the wasp was making it before their eyes, by very much the same process as that by which human hands now manufacture it with the best aid of chemistry and machinery. While some nations carved their records on wood, and stone, and brass, and leaden tablets,—others, more advanced, wrote with a style on wax,—others employed the inner bark of trees, and others the skins of animals rudely prepared,—the wasp was manufacturing a firm and durable paper. Even when the papyrus was rendered more fit, by a process of art, for the transmission of ideas in writing, the wasp was a better artisan than the Egyptians; for the early attempts at paper-making were so rude, that the substance produced was almost useless, from being extremely friable. The paper of the papyrus was formed of the leaves of the plant, dried, pressed, and polished; the wasp alone knew how to reduce vegetable fibres to a pulp, and then unite them by a size or glue, spreading the substance out into a smooth and delicate leaf. This is exactly the process of paper-making. It would seem that the wasp knows, as the modern paper-makers now know, that the fibres of rags, whether linen or cotton, are not the only materials that can be used in the formation of paper; she employs other vegetable matters, converting them into a proper consistency by her assiduous exertions. In some respects she is more skilful even than our paper-makers, for she takes care to retain her fibres of sufficient length, by which she renders her paper as strong as she requires. Many manufacturers of the present day cut their material into small bits, and thus produce a rotten article. One great distinction between good and bad paper is its toughness; and this difference is invariably produced by the fibre of which it is composed being long, and therefore tough; or short, and therefore friable.
The wasp has been labouring at her manufacture of paper from her first creation, with precisely the same instruments and the same materials; and her success has been unvarying. Her machinery is very simple, and therefore it is never out of order. She learns nothing, and she forgets nothing. Men, from time to time, lose their excellence in particular arts, and they are slow in finding out real improvements. Such improvements are often the effect of accident. Paper is now manufactured very extensively by machinery in all its stages; and thus, instead of a single sheet being made by hand, a stream of paper is poured out, which would form a roll large enough to extend round the globe, if such a length were desirable. The inventors of this machinery, Messrs. Fourdrinier, it is said, spent the enormous sum of 40,000l.. in vain attempts to render the machine capable of determining with precision the width of the roll; and, at last, accomplished their object, at the suggestion of a bystander, by a strap revolving upon an axis, at a cost of three shillings and sixpence. Such is the difference between the workings of human knowledge and experience, and those of animal instinct. We proceed slowly and in the dark, but our course is not bounded by a narrow line, for it seems difficult to say what is the perfection of any art; animals go clearly to a given point—but they can go no further. We may, however, learn something from their perfect knowledge of what is within their range. It is not improbable that if man had attended in an earlier state of society to the labours of wasps, he would have sooner known how to make paper. We are still behind in our arts and sciences, because we have not always been observers. If we had watched the operations of insects, and the structure of insects in general, with more care, we might have been far advanced in the knowledge of many arts which are yet in their infancy, for nature has given us abundance of patterns. We have learnt to perfect some instruments of sound by examining the structure of the human ear; and the mechanism of an eye has suggested some valuable improvements in achromatic glasses.
Réaumur has given a very interesting account of the wasps of Cayenne (Chartergus nidulans), which hang their nests in trees.[Y] Like the bird of Africa called the social grosbeak (Loxia socia), they fabricate a perfect house, capable of containing many hundreds of their community, and suspend it on high out of the reach of attack. But the Cayenne wasp is a more expert artist than the bird. He is a pasteboard-maker;—and the card with which he forms the exterior covering of his abode is so smooth, so strong, so uniform in its texture, and so white, that the most skilful manufacturer of this substance might be proud of the work. It takes ink admirably.
The nest of the pasteboard-making wasp is impervious to water. It hangs upon the branch of a tree, as represented in the engraving; and those rain-drops which penetrate through the leaves never rest upon its hard and polished surface. A small opening for the entrance of the insects terminates its funnel-shaped bottom. It is impossible to unite more perfectly the qualities of lightness and strength.
Nest of the Pasteboard-maker Wasp, with part removed to show the arrangement of the Cells.
In the specimen from which we take our description, the length of which is nine inches, six stout circular platforms stretch internally across, like so many floors, and fixed all round to the walls of the nest. They are smooth above, with hexagonal cells on the under surface. These platforms are not quite flat, but rather concave above, like a watch-glass reversed; the centre of each platform is perforated for the admission of the wasps, at the extremity of a short funnel-like projection, and through this access is gained from story to story. On each platform, therefore, can the wasps walk leisurely about attending to the pupæ secured in the cells, which, with the mouths downward, cover the ceiling above their heads—the height of the latter being just convenient for their work.
[Unlike the habitations made by the British wasps, and which are vacated annually, this nest is permanent, and serves for several successive seasons. Of course, it must be enlarged continually, so as to accommodate an ever-increasing number of inhabitants. The mode of enlarging is sufficiently curious. The British wasps enlarge their nests either by making a larger covering and then removing the smaller, or by raising blisters on the outside, and eating away beneath them. But the pendulous wasp of Brazil proceeds on just the opposite principle, making new cells first, and covering them afterwards. The new tier of cells is set on the bottom of the nest, which thus becomes the floor of that tier, and a new bottom is then made beneath these new cells.]
Pendent wasps’ nests of enormous size are found in Ceylon, suspended often in the talipot-tree at the height of seventy feet. The appearance of these nests thus elevated, with the larger leaves of the tree, used by the natives as umbrellas and tents, waving over them, is very singular. Though no species of European wasp is a storer of honey, yet this rule does not apply to certain species of South America. In the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History’ for June, 1841, will be found a detailed account, with a figure, of the pendent nest of a species termed by Mr. A. White Myrapetra scutellaris. The external case consists of stout cardboard covered with conical knobs of various sizes. The entrances are artfully protected by pent-roofs from the weather and heavy rains; and are tortuous, so as to render the ingress of a moth or other large insect difficult. Internally are fourteen combs, exclusive of a globular mass, the nucleus of several circular combs, which are succeeded by others of an arched form—that is, constituting segments of circles. Many of the uppermost combs were found to have the cells filled with honey of a brownish-red colour, but which had lost its flavour. After entering into some minute details, Mr. A. White makes the following interesting observations:—"Azara, in the account of his residence in various parts of South America, mentions the fact of several wasps of these countries collecting honey. The Baron Walchenaer, who edited the French translation of this work, published in 1809, thought that the Spanish traveller, who was unskilled in entomology, had made some mistake with regard to the insects, and regarded the so-called wasps as belonging to some bee of the genus of which Apis amalthea is the type (Melipona). Latreille (who afterwards corrected his mistake) also believed that they must be referred to the genera Melipona or Trigona—insects which in South America take the place of our honey-bee. These authors were afterwards clearly convinced of the correctness of Azara’s observations, by the circumstance of M. Auguste de St. Hilaire finding near the river Uruguay an oval grey-coloured nest of a papery consistence, like that of the European wasps, suspended from the branches of a small shrub about a foot from the ground: he and two other attendants partook of some honey (contained in its cells) and found it of an agreeable sweetness, free from the pharmaceutic taste which so frequently accompanies European honey. He gives a detailed account of its poisonous effects on himself and his two men. Afterwards he procured specimens of the wasp, which was described by Latreille under the name of Polistes Lecheguana."
