_Uncle Philip tells the Children about the first Paper in the
World, made by Wasps._
"Ah, boys! how do you do? This is Saturday, and I have been expecting to
see you come for some time."
"Why, Uncle Philip, we should have been here sooner, but we went round
by the old mill; because we thought that perhaps we might find in some
of the old timbers, holes bored by some of those industrious little
carpenters you told us about."
"Well; and did you find any?"
"No; but we found something else, which we have brought to show you: and
we have been talking about it all the way. We have not discovered any
new _tools_ among the animals, but we think we have found out a _trade_
that some of them work at; and we wish you to tell us if we are right."
"Oh, that I will do, with pleasure, if I can. What is the trade that
you think you have discovered?"
"It is paper-making, Uncle Philip. We have found this part of a wasp's
nest, which we have brought along; and as you told us it was always best
to notice every thing closely, we examined this, and it appeared so much
like coarse paper that we thought (for we knew it was made by wasps)
that man did not make the first paper in the world."
"Well, boys, that was not a bad thought. Now you see the advantage of
taking notice of things, and of thinking about what you see. You are
perfectly right in supposing that wasps make paper; and, if you please,
we will talk this morning about the wasps."
"Oh yes, yes, by all means, Uncle Philip; and we will thank you, too."
"I must first tell you, then, that of the wasps there are several kinds.
Some build their nests under ground, and some hang theirs in the air to
the limb of a tree. This part of a nest which you have found belonged to
the last kind; but I will tell you something about both. But before I
begin let me get some drawings I have, which will help us to understand
better. I have them. And now, of the wasps which build under ground.
As soon as the warm season begins, the first care of the mother-wasp
is to look for a fit place in which to build; and in the spring of the
year she may very often be seen flying about a hole in the bank of a
ditch, and looking into it. These holes which she examines are the old
houses of field-mice or moles, and some persons have thought, what I
expect is true, that she likes to take such old holes, because they save
her a great deal of hard work. But still, as the holes are not large
enough for her use, she has a great deal of labour to make them do. So
she goes at once to work, digging in the hole she has chosen, and makes
a winding, zigzag gallery, about two feet long, and about an inch in
width. She digs out the earth, and carries it out, or pushes it out
behind her as she goes on. This gallery ends in a large chamber or hole
from one to two feet across when it is done: and now she is ready to
begin her nest."
"Now then, Uncle Philip, she will begin to make paper, will she not?"
"Yes; but here I ought to tell you that it was a long time before men
found out what she made it of. Do you remember my telling you of a
gentleman who watched the little cloak-maker to see how he made his
garment? Well, this gentleman, whose name was Reaumur, was trying for
twenty years, he says, to find out how the wasp made paper, before he
succeeded. At last, one day, he saw a female wasp alight on the sash
of his window and begin to gnaw the wood; he watched her, and saw that
she pulled off from the wood fibre after fibre, about the tenth part of
an inch long, and not so large as a hair. She gathered these up into a
knot with her feet, and then flew to another part of the sash, and went
to work, stripping off more fibres or threads, and putting them to the
bundle she had already. At last he caught her, to examine the bundle,
and found that its colour was exactly like that of a wasp's nest; but
the little ball was dry; she had not yet wetted it to make a pulp of it
which could be spread out. He noticed another thing, that this bundle
was not at all like wood gnawed by other insects; it was not sawdust,
but threads of some little length bruised into lint. He then set to work
himself with his penknife, and very soon scraped and bruised some of the
wood of the same window-sash, so as to make a little ball exactly like
the wasp's. Mr. Reaumur thought that this was the stuff out of which the
wasp made paper, and it has since been found out that he was right. The
animal wets its little bundle of bruised wooden fibres or threads with
a kind of glue that it has, and this makes it stick together like pulp
or paste; and while it is soft, the wasp walks backwards, and spreads it
out with her feet and her tongue, until she has made it almost as thin
as the thinnest paper. With this she lines the top of the hole in which
she is going to build her nest, for she always begins at the top. But
this is so thin that it would be too weak to keep the dirt from falling
in; and therefore she goes on spreading her papers one upon the other
until she has made the wall nearly two inches thick. These pieces are
not laid exactly flat on each other like two pieces of pasteboard, but
with little open spaces between, being joined at the edges only. This
is the ceiling; and when it is finished she begins to build what may be
called the highest floor of the nest; this she makes of the same paper
in a great number of little cells all joined together at the sides; and
instead of fastening this floor to the sides of the nest, she hangs it
to the ceiling by rods made also out of this paper: these rods are small
in the middle, and grow larger towards the ends, so as to be stronger.
Here is a drawing of one.
[Illustration: The Cut represents one of the Rods from which the Floors
are suspended.]
She then makes a second floor, and hangs it under the first by rods as
before; and the whole of it, when finished, if it should be cut straight
through the middle, would appear something like the following picture of
one which I made some years ago."
[Illustration: _Section of the Social-Wasp's Nest._--_aa_, the outer
wall; _b_, _cc_, five small terraces of cells for the neuter wasps;
_dd_, _ee_, three rows of large cells for the males and females.]
"This is a very ingenious little paper-maker. Uncle Philip."
"Yes, boys, it is so. This of which I have been telling you is the
ground-wasp. The tree-wasp makes its nest of paper prepared in the same
way; and the nests are of different shapes. One makes it in a round
flattened ball, not much larger than a rose, and when cut open it shows
layer upon layer of leaves of the same thin grayish-looking paper. This
kind is not so common, however. Here is one of their nests.
[Illustration: Wasp's Nest.]
"Another makes its nest of cells placed in separate floors, but without
any outer wall to keep off the rain; and the most curious thing in this
nest is, that it is not placed in a horizontal way; that is, it is not
placed with the floors level, because then the cells would catch the
rain, and the nest would be spoiled; but it is always placed slanting,
so that the rain may run off. It is always placed, too, so as to face
the north or the west, and I suppose it is because the wasp knows that
it is in more danger of rain from the south and the east. Here is a nest
of this kind."
[Illustration: Wasp's Cells attached to a branch.]
"Ah, Uncle Philip! this must be a kind of lazy wasp. It does not choose
to take the trouble to cover up the house, and so it hangs it slanting,
to make the rain run off."
"It may be so, boys; but I think that in making this wasp lazy, you make
it a very sensible wasp; else how should it know that water would run
down a slanting surface? But I cannot believe that it is so lazy; for,
though it does not cover up the whole house in a paper shell, yet it
does what no other wasp does, it covers its nest with a complete coat of
shining, water-proof varnish, to prevent the rain from soaking into the
cells. And putting on this varnish, I can tell you, is no trifling work.
It forms a pretty large part of the labour of the whole swarm belonging
to the nest; and sometimes you may see some of them at work for hours at
a time, spreading it on with their tongues. No, my lads, he who wants an
example of laziness, will not find it among the wasps.
"But let us come back to the paper. Hornets make paper for their nests
much in the same manner as the wasps do, only it is coarser. There is,
however, one kind of wasp which makes a sort of paper more curious than
this which you have found. It is not a wasp found in this country at
all. It is the Cayenne wasp, and so smooth, strong, and white is the
outside of his nest that it appears like a card, and he is for that
reason sometimes called the card-maker wasp. He hangs his nest on the
branch of a tree, and it is so hard and polished on the outside that
the rain rolls off from it, as if it were glass. A little hole in the
lower end is left for the animal to pass in and out; and in this picture
of it, which I have, a piece is left out of the side to show how the
cells within are fixed."
[Illustration: Nest of the Card-maker Wasp, with part removed to show
the arrangement of the Cells.]
"Well, then, Uncle Philip, we were right in thinking that wasps were the
first paper-makers; and very glad we are that we saw this old piece of
a wasp's nest. Who would have thought that so much could be learned by
picking up this old scrap of a wasp's work!"
"Very good sense, boys, in that thought. A wise man will learn something
from almost any thing. Use your eyes, and think of what you see. Now in
this very trade of paper-making. I think that man would have found it
out a great deal sooner if he had watched the wasps at their work. They
have been excellent workmen at this business from the beginning; and man
has gone on learning little by little of this very trade, as I will tell
you at some other time, when he might have made a long step at once,
had he but noticed wasps and hornets. We go on very slowly sometimes in
learning to make a trade as perfect as it can be: the poor animal, with
its knowledge such as God gave it, is often our superior. These dumb
creatures cannot teach us every thing; there is a point to which they
can go, and no further: but as far as they do know, their knowledge is
perfect; and I make no doubt that a great many useful things not now
known will hereafter be found out by watching dumb animals."