A boiler or a furnace she regards as the ideal home, but [[74]]she is quite willing to content herself in any snug corner: a conservatory, a kitchen-ceiling, the recess of a closed window, the wall of a cottage bedroom. As to the foundation on which she fixes her nest, she is entirely indifferent. As a rule she builds her groups of cells on stonework or timber; but at various times I have seen nests inside a gourd, in a fur cap, in the hollow of a brick, on the side of a bag of oats, and in a piece of lead tubing.
Once I saw something more remarkable still, in a farm near Avignon. In a large room with a very wide fireplace the soup for the farm-hands and the food for the cattle simmered in a row of pots. The labourers used to come in from the fields to this room, and devour their meal with the silent haste that comes from a keen appetite. To enjoy this half-hour comfortably they would take off their hats and smocks, and hang them on pegs. Short though this meal was, it was long enough to allow the Wasps to take possession of their garments. The inside of a straw hat was recognised as a most useful building-site, the folds of a smock were looked upon as a capital shelter; and the work of building started at once. On rising from the table one of the men would shake his smock, and another his hat, to rid it of the Wasp’s nest, which was already the size of an acorn.
The cook in that farmhouse regarded the Wasps with no friendly eye. They dirtied everything, she said. [[75]]Dabs of mud on the ceiling, on the walls, or on the chimney-piece you could put up with; but it was a very different matter when you found them on the linen and the curtains. She had to beat the curtains every day with a bamboo. And it was trouble thrown away. The next morning the Wasps began building as busily as ever.
II
HER BUILDING
I sympathised with the sorrows of that farm-cook, but greatly regretted that I could not take her place. How gladly I would have left the Wasps undisturbed, even if they had covered all the furniture with mud! How I longed to know what the fate of a nest would be, if perched on the uncertain support of a coat or a curtain! The nest of the Mason-bee is made of hard mortar, which surrounds the twig on which it is built, and becomes firmly fixed to it; but the nest of the Pelopæus Wasp is a mere blob of mud, without cement or foundations.
The materials of which it is made are nothing but wet earth or dirt, picked up wherever the soil is damp enough. The thin clay of a river-bank is very suitable, but in my stony country streams are rare. I can, however, watch the builders at my leisure in my own garden, when a thin trickle of water runs all day, as it does sometimes, [[76]]through the little trenches that are cut in my vegetable plots.
The Pelopæus Wasps of the neighbourhood soon become aware of this glad event, and come hurrying up to take advantage of the precious layer of mud, a rare discovery in the dry season. They scrape and skim the gleaming, shiny surface with their mandibles while standing high on their legs, with their wings quivering and their black bodies upraised. No neat little housewife, with skirts carefully tucked up out of the dirt, could be more skilful in tackling a job likely to soil her clothes. These mud-gatherers have not an atom of dirt upon them, so careful are they to tuck up their skirts in their own fashion, that is to say, to keep their whole body out of the way, all but the tips of their legs and the busy points of the mandibles with which they work.
In this way a dab of mud is collected, almost the size of a pea. Taking the load in its teeth the insect flies off, adds a layer to its building, and soon returns to collect another pellet. The same method is pursued as long as the earth remains sufficiently wet, during the hottest hours of the day.