Fig. 353.—Nest of Polistes gallica.
Fig. 354.
The Card-making Wasp
(Chartergus nidulans).
The Card-making Wasp of Cayenne (Chartergus nidulans, [Fig. 354]) is a consummate artist. Its nest represents a sort of box or bag, made of a substance resembling cardboard, so fine and so white that the best worker in that material would be deceived by it. This nest has only one single hole at its base; each of the combs it contains is likewise pierced by a hole in its centre, to afford a passage to the wasps. In an architectural point of view, the card-making wasp is almost superior to the bee, for the latter does not build its house, it only furnishes it, as Latreille remarks with truth. The Brazilian species of Chartergus, which the inhabitants call Lecheguana,[103] manufactures a honey, the use of which is not without danger, as it occasions vertigo and sharp pains in the stomach. The naturalist, Auguste Saint-Hilaire, during his sojourn in Brazil, himself experienced ill effects from eating it.
There are, moreover, solitary wasps, which make their cells in holes which they scoop out in the ground, or in the stalks of certain plants. In the adult state these live on honey; but their larvæ are carnivorous, and the female is obliged to bring them living insects. The commonest of these solitary wasps belong to the genus Odynerus. This insect makes its nest in the stalk of a bramble or briar ([Fig. 358]) with a mortar which it prepares. The larva ([Fig. 356]) lines its cell with a silky cocoon. It is the last egg laid which is hatched the first; then come the others, in an inverse order from that in which they were deposited. If it had been in the other order, the insects could not have come out of the cells without destroying on their way the less advanced pupa.
| Fig. 355.—A species of Odynerus. | Fig. 356.—Larva of the Odynerus. | Fig. 357.—Pupa of the Odynerus. |
Fig. 358.—Nest of an Odynerus in the stem of a bramble.