TWO WONDERFUL WASPS
(JUNE)
This is one of Spinipes' burrows opened up. There is an egg at the bottom on the left-hand side and a caterpillar on the right-hand side. The egg is hanging by a silk thread, but you can't see this
I EXPECT you all must know the Common Yellow Wasps—the kind that come buzzing into the jam at tea-time; and I want to tell you this about them—that I don't think they ever really get angry if there is jam about and you leave them alone, though, when small people jump up and scream, and edge away from the table, and make bad shots at them with spoons, they get so frightened and bewildered, poor things, that they may sting somebody, because they feel they really must do something exciting.
Perhaps some of you do not know that there are seven different kinds of these Yellow Wasps to be met with in this country of ours, and I should be surprised to hear that any of you know much about the two Black Wasps whose story I am going to tell you. I say "black," because they look black, though both of them have yellow girdles on their bodies. I wish they had English names; for I am sure they both deserve them; and English names are much easier to remember than Latin ones. However, Latin names are the only ones I know for them, so we must make the best of it, and call one of them Spinipes (you must read this as if it were Spiny Peas) and the other Crabro.
This is a little picture of Spinipes bringing up a grub, which she is clasping beneath her body
We will take Spinipes first.
If you look at the picture on the opposite page, you will see what she is like, and, if you look at the picture in Spinipes the Sand-Wasp (p. 151) you will see one of the clever things she does.
She is building a little tube out of sand which is so delicate that the slightest touch from one of our own clumsy fingers will knock it down like a card-house, but it is strong enough for her to crawl inside; and she has to crawl inside very often, as you will see. I expect you will all want to know how she builds it, and what it is for. I will tell you how she builds it to begin with. You must know first that she has a pair of jaws which work quite differently from ours. Instead of moving up and down, they move across each other from side to side just like a pair of scissors.
This is the Spinipes' grub feeding on the little green caterpillars
The first thing that Spinipes does is to work this little pair of scissors in the sand so as to make a little hole. I am showing you on page 148 a picture of her when she is just starting to dig. Every little pellet of sand she digs out she puts carefully round the outside of the hole, and presently she glues them all together. She carries the glue somewhere inside her, and brings it out when she wants it, Then she digs a little deeper and glues another layer of sand pellets on the top of the first one, and in a very short time she has dug a hole about two inches deep, and built a little tube round the top of it, which is made of the little sand-pellets she has brought out of the hole. Sometimes the tube stands straight up, but more often it bends about half-way and curves downwards. When she has finished it off, and is sure that the hole is deep enough, and the tube is long enough, she goes right down to the bottom and lays an egg, and she hangs the egg by a tiny thread (which she also makes herself, but I don't know how she does it) to the side of the hole a little above the bottom. You will be able to see this in the picture, but you must remember that in this and in some of the other pictures the sand has been cut away so that you can see exactly how the hole goes. Then, if it is a bright, sunny day, as it usually is when she begins digging, she flies away, and in about half an hour's time comes back carrying something clasped tight against her body. What do you think that is? It is a small green caterpillar. She stops a moment at the entrance of the tube, pushes the caterpillar down in front of her, and disappears after it. In a few seconds she is out again and off, and in another quarter of an hour or so she is back again with another caterpillar and so on, without ever tiring, through six or seven hours of a hot June or July day.
This shows you the cocoon which Spinipes' grub makes for itself. I have opened it to show you the grub, and also the little partition in the shaft above the grub, which is the last thing Spinipes herself makes
I expect you will have guessed what the caterpillars are for. They are food for the wasp grub when it hatches out of the egg. Generally each hole has between twenty and thirty little caterpillars in it, and sometimes, when caterpillars are scarce, the Mother Wasp has to work hard for three or four days. If you dig into a hole yourself and look at the store of little caterpillars, you will see there is something the matter with them. They seem to be alive and yet they don't seem to be able to crawl. Wise men say that the wasp stings them just enough to make them drowsy so that they can't crawl out of the hole, and can't hurt the wasp grub by jostling up against it. It wouldn't do to kill them, because then they would go bad in the hole before the grub had time to eat them. This sounds rather cruel, but I don't think it is really, because it is quite certain that the caterpillars cannot feel as we should perhaps feel, and we may be quite sure that in the wonderful Nature World everything is arranged for the best, so that only the right number of wasp-grubs may be properly fed and grow up to do what it is their duty to do, and only the right number of small green caterpillars may grow up also.
The little beetle that the caterpillars turn into. It is sitting on its own open-work cocoon, from which it has just hatched out. The picture makes it about twice its real size
You will wonder, I expect, why the Mother Wasp troubles to make the little tube above the hole. I think I can tell you one reason and you must remember this, because it was just by chance that I found it out. One hot morning in June I watched Mother Spinipes bringing seven caterpillars to her hole. Then a heavy thunderstorm came on, and the rain came down in buckets, and I had to run away for shelter. Late in the evening when it had cleared up a little, I thought I would like to see what had happened to the tube I had been watching, and I went back to the place and found that the rain had knocked it all to pieces. But I saw something much more interesting than this. The tube had been on the face of a sand-cliff, and in a crack close by there was an ants' nest. I found that the ants were running down the wasp's hole and bringing out the caterpillars as fast as they could (I saw them take six away), and taking them along the face of the cliff into their own stronghold. Now the tube that stands out from the sand somehow frightens the ants (I never saw an ant climb out along the tube and down inside it), and so I think that one of the reasons for the tube must be that it keeps away ants and creatures of that kind who crawl about on the face of the sand cliff and like eating caterpillars.
BEFORE THE THUNDERSTORM
AFTER THE THUNDERSTORM
This is a large picture of Crabro, about twice as big as she really is
It was a long time before I found out what kind of creature the caterpillars stored by Spinipes would have turned into if they had not been caught. I thought that it would have been a small moth, but I was quite wrong. At different times I took several caterpillars away from the tubes, and tried to bring them up, but it was of no use, for they all died because they could not eat. One day, however, I happened to be sweeping with a butterfly-net in a field of lucerne—it is great fun sweeping, and you should try it, for you never know what you may get next—and I swept up what I knew at once was the self-same little green caterpillar that Spinipes stocked her larder with. She always brought the same kind. Well, I got a good many of them by sweeping in the lucerne, and brought them up carefully, and, in due time, they spun little open-work cocoons on the lucerne leaves which I fed them with, and at last turned into small, brown, long-nosed beetles. I need not trouble you with the Latin names of these beetles, but I may tell you that they are a kind of weevil which is very common and very destructive to clover and plants of that kind. So, if we consider that every Mother Spinipes lays eight or nine eggs, and stocks eight or nine burrows each with about thirty destructive little caterpillars, we must allow that she is a very useful little wasp.
This is Crabro looking out of her hole. The front of her face is covered with bright silver hair, so fine that it looks like a silver plate. The picture is twice her real size
But I am not sure that she is more useful to man than the other little wasp I have to tell of, the Crabro. I found out her usefulness quite by chance, and I expect you will like to hear how. To begin with, I must tell you that all the "Digger" Wasps, as some people call them, Spinipes and the Crabros and several other kinds, store their burrows with insect food for their grubs to feed on.
But each one has her own particular idea as to what is the best food. One will use nothing but little spiders, another nothing but little flies, another, like Spinipes, nothing but little beetle grubs. And the queer part is that they seldom seem to make any mistake as to the kind of food they want. It will be one kind of spider, and one kind of fly, and one kind of beetle-grub. If there are ever more than one kind, they are always very near relations, and, I suppose, taste very much alike.
This is how the cocoon looked when I had taken the sawdust away. The plug of sawdust above it leads into the round hole in the wood
Now Crabro's store consists of really large flies, blue-bottles, and green-bottles—I expect most of you know the beautiful shiny green-bottle fly whose proper name is Caesar—and how little Crabro manages to overcome and carry off large bottle-flies who are several times her own size and several times her own weight, I cannot tell. But I have found out for certain that she does so, and the pictures will show you how I found out.
At the bottom of the picture you will see one of Crabro's stores of blue-bottles, and if you look carefully you will see one of the fly's wings stretching out of it
Last autumn a dangerous bough had to be taken down from the top of a high elm-tree in my garden. It was perhaps sixty feet above the ground and it came down with a crash and broke up into little pieces. I picked up one of these tubes and galleries, which I knew were insects' work. But there was something much more exciting than this. A number of the galleries had blind ends to them, and at the bottom of these were masses of dead blue-bottles, tightly packed, which rested on small pillows of sawdust, and had long plugs of sawdust above them.
This is what the piece of elm-bough looked like. You will be able to see the little tunnels, and the stores of blue-bottles, which are black-looking, and the plugs of sawdust, in which the pupa cases of the wasp-grubs are hidden. You can see one pupa about half way up
I opened one of the long sawdust plugs and found, as I half expected to find, that at the end of it next to the blue-bottles, was a small brown papery cocoon, and that inside the cocoon was a wasp grub. I need hardly tell you that I collected a lot of the wood, and kept it carefully through the winter, and tried to make the little grubs as much at home as if they had stayed up in their tree. To do this I had to keep the wood in moist and rather dark surroundings. Then when the spring came round I sometimes put the wood in the sunshine, when it was not too hot, and in the first week in June I was rewarded for my trouble, for the little wasps hatched out in dozens, and so I was able to find out what they were.
Look up to the top of the trees some warm summer day, and think of the blue-bottle hunt which may be going on above us, and of the wonderful little hunter, Crabro.
This is one of the cocoons of Crabro in the elm-bough. Crabro is just going to hatch out. You can see the little black hole where she has started gnawing
SPINIPES THE SAND-WASP
(MIDSUMMER DAY)
AUTHOR'S NOTE
THIS insect-tale is based on observations of fact extending over several summers. It may interest some of my readers to know the scientific names of the chief characters mentioned. I do not think that any of them have popular names. The heroine is the solitary Sand-Wasp Odynerus Spinipes, a blacker and somewhat smaller insect than the familiar yellow Wasps of Town and Garden. The Red King and the Black Queen are the male and female of a solitary Bumble Bee, Anthophora Pilipes. The Mistress of the Robes is a "Cuckoo" Bee, Melecta armata, which attends on Anthophora, and lays its eggs in the cells made by Anthophora for her own eggs. The grubs of both feed on the honey and pollen which Anthophora alone has the trouble of procuring. O. Spinipes has several cuckoos, the most officious being the jewel flies, Chrysis ignita and Chrysis bidentata, whose grubs, I fancy, eat the grub of Spinipes, as well as the food stored up for it. The Ophion is a common Ichneumon fly, and the beetle-grubs belong to a very common and destructive weevil, Hypera variabilis.
THE Sand Cliff splits the old gravel-pit in two, and, jutting southward, fronts the mid-day sun. The cuttings driven east and west of it have long been clothed with furze and briar and nettle. Rank grass conceals the cart-track round its base, and, on its summit, a thin, root-bound soil gives foothold to a straggling hedge of privet.
THE SAND CLIFF SPLITS THE OLD GRAVEL-PIT IN TWO
Man, needing gravel only, scorned the sand; and, as he turned his back on it, came Nature, gently mothering; and brought it warmth, and light, and life.
First the Wild Bees, Red Kings, Black Queens
First the wild Bees, Red Kings, Black Queens, fringe-footed, shaggy-coated. These made a chambered palace of the cliff, and peopled it within a summer. With them came Lords-in-Waiting and their Ladies, in liveries of black velvet, ermine-faced; and, after these, a fluttering gauze-winged host—jewel-flies ablaze with green and blue and crimson, trim slender-waisted digger-wasps, long-streamered swart ichneumons. And, last of all, came Spinipes herself.
Straight from the blue she dropped on May's last morning, swerved through the hum and racket of the Bees, poised with her smoke-grey wings a-whir, and lighted softly on the centre ledge, her ebony body mirroring the sun, her five gold girdles blazing.
Down dropped a Red King at her side. He stared at her right royally, and kept right royal silence, yet there was kindness in his yellow face, and kindness in the purr of his departure.
Down dropped a Black Queen in his place, and danced and hummed about her, and measured her slim-waistedness, and buzzed her disapproval.—"What is it?" asked she snappishly. "Why does it come in this get-up? Where has it left its furs?"
Down dropped a Red King at her side. He stared at her right royally
"It never had furs," said a voice behind her. It was her Mistress of the Robes.
"I know the family, Ma'am. Queer clothes, of course. But artists, Ma'am, artists to the toe-tips."
"Artists in what?" said the Black Queen.
"In Sand, Ma'am, in Sand. See, she's starting now."
"That's hive-bee's work," said the Black Queen contemptuously.
"The art comes at the finish, Ma'am–"
"Well, call me when it comes," said the Black Queen, "and keep her off the nurseries, and clean that eleventh cell of mine, and wait till I come back. She soared up skywards, fussily, cleared the cliff's head, circled three times about, and set a straight course south.
"Good riddance!" said the Mistress of the Robes.
"They're like that everywhere," said Spinipes. "What are her nurseries to me? Black Queens and black sand go together. Now this is red sand. I feel the grip and bind of it."
In Sand, Ma'am, in Sand. See, she's starting now
She was quite right. The ledge was rain-washed silt. Sunshine had bleached the outer crust of it, but, under this, its substance was brick-red—fine ground stuff too, damp, clingy, easily tunnelled, and easily smarmed into a hold-fast mortar.
"In that case," said the Mistress of the Robes, "I may as well be going."
Slowly she floated off the ledge, yet kept her face towards it. Slowly she tacked from side to side, in dipping, widening sweeps. Slowly she passed the cliff's east edge, and disappeared.
Then Spinipes commenced to dig in earnest.
"Well, call me when it comes," said the Black Queen
Her scissor-jaws worked viciously, carved four-square pellets from the sun-baked crust, gripped them and flung them backwards. As she engaged the softer soil, she added feverish foot-work, and scraped, and rasped, and scrabbled it, and kicked it back in dust-clouds. Her head was quickly buried, next her waist, and, presently, she disappeared completely.
But not for long.
She backed up to the surface, dragging a sand-load underneath her body. She shook this clear, and, without resting, dived afresh. Ten loads in all she raised, and each one meant a longer spell below. For she had more to do than dig. From end to end her shaft must needs be glazed—and this meant patient mouth-work, deft steadying touches as the mortar set, and skill to keep her tube's round symmetry, and guide it in a gentle curve to end in quiet darkness. Three inches down she sank, and, at the bottom, drove a slant, and hollowed out a store-room.
With this the first stage ended. She left her shaft, and, poising in mid-air, made survey of the ledge. To right she swerved, to left again, outwards and back, upwards and down, until its bearings east and west, from sky above, and earth below, were rooted in her memory.
Then Spinipes commenced to dig in earnest
So far, so good—her morning's work was done, the picture of it fixed into her mind. Upwards she soared until the receding cliff shrunk to a splotch of brown. Once more she took her bearings and was satisfied, set her course east, and, with a dropping arrow's flight, came to the hill-top coppice. She landed on the bramble hedge which skirts its western clearing.
"Good hunting, sister!" said the Ophion Fly. She sat on a high briar-leaf, her rainbow wings uplifted.
"It's hardly time for that," said Spinipes. "To-morrow, p'raps. To-day I feed myself."
"There's lucerne on the slope," the Ophion said, "and something underneath you."
"Good hunting, sister!" said the Ophion Fly
There was a snap and flicker in the grass, and presently appeared a pygmy beetle, long-snouted, dusty-coated, trailing its slow legs wearily.
"D'you see it?" said the Ophion Fly.
"I see it, but what of it?"
"It means good hunting, sister. Green grubs, black-headed, fatted. Too small for me, but just the size for you. You'll find them in the lucerne."
"Thank you," said Spinipes, but she was half across the field, a dancing, filmy wisp of pink, wind-borne.
A meal, and then to work, thought Spinipes. It must be done by sunset. It must. It must.
From spray to spray she flitted. Flower after flower she robbed of its pale nectar. Bud after bud she nibbled. At last she found the food she sought, and, with her strength renewed, took flight. Upwards she soared; three times she circled round; then in a straight, unbroken course, whizzed to her shaft. Her pace was scarcely slackened as she entered. Her wings closed lengthways on her back, and, in a moment, she was at the bottom.
Something was there before her.
Something six legged, which kicked and squirmed and writhed. Something which coiled to a hard, slippery ball, and rolled away from capture.
There was no space for it to pass, and yet there seemed no holding it. At last she pinned it with her feet, and, backing, dragged it upwards to the light. It was a radiant jewel fly, a squat, short-waisted, dumpy thing made glorious by its colour. Gems sparkled on it head to tail, sapphire and ruby, emerald and topaz, and, as it struggled, fire of gold blazed and died down upon its jerking body. Instinctively she shook and worried it. Instinctively she flung it down the slope. Head over tail, tight-clenched, it spun, nor opened till it reached the grass below. Here it snapped out to shape again, took instant wing, and, with a glancing flight, regained the ledge.
"An excellent shaft, Madam; quite excellent. No doubt you made it for a special purpose. Now I–"
"Listen to me," said Spinipes, "and mark my every word. If you come near that shaft again—if you so much as touch it with your feet, I'll sting your prying life out."
She charged at it full swing and chased it off the ledge.
"An area sneak!" she muttered, as she dropt underground once more—"and over-dressed at that."
The last to cease from play was the Rose-Chafer
Below the walls showed signs of the encounter—it took ten minutes to repair their glazing. When this was done, she crept back to the entrance. It was high noon. A shimmery haze rose from the heated sand. The hum of work died fitfully away, as, one by one, the homing bees sought shade. The digger-wasps dived deep into their holes; the hunting spiders hid themselves. These were the last to cease from work; the last to cease from play was the rose-chafer.
Him the fierce blaze of heat impelled to bursts of clumsy flight. Across the pit and back again, and up and down the surface of the cliff, he whirred and swung at random. Soon even he grew listless, and crept within the shelter of the privet.
The change came with a catspaw breeze, which rippled from the valley, and, in its quiet passing, fanned the cliff.
It brought back life and energy.
Out flew the bees, a jostling, buzzing throng of them, see-sawing wildly up and down, swinging, reversing, wheeling. At length they towered and broke to work. Out crept the hunting spiders, zebra-coated; the fluttering, dancing, digger-wasps; the lightning-footed ants. Out, last of all, came Spinipes herself.
Out flew the Bees
Her first care was her toilet. She combed her long antennæ out and nibbled at each foot. A circling flight to stretch her wings ended where it had started; and, in a moment, she had plunged below. Two minutes she stayed underground, then came up slowly backwards. Between her jaws was a clean-cut sand pellet. She placed it on the rim of the shaft opening, and, with deft touches from her lips, cemented it in station. She danced about it joyously, with fluttery wings, with airy, buoyant feet, moistened it here, kneaded it there. Once more she dived and dragged a second pellet up, and fixed this too upon the rim. So diving, digging, fixing, shaping, she raised a low ring-parapet.
Hour after hour she toiled
Hour after hour she toiled, tier after tier she added, gluing each pellet firmly to the last, yet leaving open space between each junction. So rose a filagree tube of sand, so fragile that a touch would crumble it; so strong that it would bear four times her weight. Before a shadow reached the cliff, it was a half-inch high. But shadows meant an end to the day's work, and Spinipes crept down below and slept.
The morning sun had shone four hours before she stirred. She peered out round-eyed from her tower, and, twisting on the rim of it, hung for a while head-downwards. A flash of green and crimson light, and something settled under her. It was the Jewel Fly again.
"Fine progress, Madam, and a first-rate tower. I never saw a better."
No word said Spinipes, but straightway launched, and flew at her.
"Out, cuckoo-sneak!" she screamed. "Out! or I sting!"
The Jewel Fly dodged like a gnat, and vanished round the corner.
She certainly meant mischief.
The lowest chamber of the shaft now held a precious thing—a spindle-shaped gold egg, slung to the side-wall by a silken thread. Back darted Spinipes to look at it; and test the fine-spun sling again; and fuss with it; and feel that it was hers.
The lowest chamber of the shaft now held a precious thing
Then up to her look-out once more. This time she dropped down to the sand and sunned herself contentedly.
The Bees had long been working. Forward and back they passed unceasingly, now and again one towered, now and again one settled; but never did their labour-song, a droning, buzzing, humming chanty, weaken or gather strength. The Jewel Fly had vanished altogether, yet Spinipes still seemed to fear her coming. A full half hour she stayed on guard, and spent the time in adding to her tower, and rounding off its entrance, which, of its own weight, took a gentle down-curve. Then, after one last gaze upon her egg, she flew afield.
"Good hunting, sister!" said the Ophion Fly. She sat on the same leaf as yesterday.
"I want them now," said Spinipes.
"The're thousands of them, thousands," said the fly, "and most of them quite fat."
It was a flabby, green, black-headed Grub
But Spinipes was too engrossed to hear her. Already, swayed by instinct she was hunting, hunting an unknown quarry in the lucerne. From plant to plant, from leaf to leaf, she fluttered. Now she dropped down to earth, and ran this way and that in the green twilight tangle. Now she sped nimble-footed up a stalk. Now she took flight and skimmed above the leaves.
At last she paused, her every muscle trembling, and stared at what confronted her.
It was a flabby, green, black-headed grub, fixed slug-like on its food-plant. A trail of skeleton tracery marked where its jaws had passed, and, as it reached the border of its leaf it swung its head, and starting near midrib, gnawed yet another ribbon-strip of green.
It ceased to feed as Spinipes appeared, and rested motionless, until her weight made its leaf-platform shiver. Then it dropped silently to earth. But Spinipes reached earth almost as fast, and, quartering every inch of ground, found it and gripped it tightly. It struggled feebly as she pinned it down, and, as she stung it, shuddered. The sting was measured to the millionth part. It robbed the grub of sentient life, yet left it living. So Nature had enjoined. For every infant Spinipes, a score of live green grubs. Robbed of full life, lest struggling they should harm the egg; forbidden death, lest dying they should taint the shaft; lulled to long sleep in mercy. Of Nature's ordinance the grub knew nothing—and Spinipes knew nothing. Her task was to make store of food against the time when her gold egg should hatch. Instinctively she knew the grub was food: instinctively she paralysed its being: instinctively she laboured to transport it.
Her jaws were fastened tight behind its head. Slowly she dragged it up a stalk until blue sky alone was over her. Then, loosing her mouth-grip of it, and clasping it with all six legs, she soared on high; one long unbroken down-glide brought her to her tower. An instant's pause to shift her grip, and she had pushed the grub within the entrance. Keeping a foot-hold on it, she eased it gently downwards, until it lay beneath her egg. She turned it over on its back and propped it to the side wall, caressed her egg, and mounted to the light again.
Back to the lucerne field she flew, and, in ten minutes, reappeared, a second grub beneath her.
This, too, she propped up carefully, and so she worked throughout the day, hunting, benumbing, storing. Twelve grubs in all she brought. All twelve she packed into a single pile. A few made feeble movements, and these, for prudence' sake, she stung afresh.
She passed the night contentedly, for it had been good hunting.
An instant's pause to shift her grip, and she had pushed the grub within the entrance.
"Take that—and that—and that," said Spinipes, and drove her sharp sting home.
Twelve Grubs in all she brought
The morrow's sky was wind-swept. Across it scurried wisps of grey with torn and fretted edges. These raced to catch each other, and fused in rounded velvet clouds. Mass joined to mass, and, surging slowly upwards, veiled the sun. Southwards, where earth met sky, a fine-drawn streak of blue endured, while, here and there, a rent across the veil gave passage to a radiant fan-spread beam. Once only did such radiance reach the cliff. It brought a treacherous message. Out swarmed the bees to snatch the chance of work, and out, with like intent, came Spinipes. Straight to her hunting-ground she flew, but, even as she reached it, came the rain.
For two hours she was weather-bound. At last a watery gleam of light, mirrored in every dripping leaf, enticed her from her shelter. Homeward she sped, and, reaching home, found havoc. Her tower was gone—the rain had razed it utterly—but there was worse mishap than this. Swift-scurrying on the surface of the sand were gangs of ants, and every gang was busy with a grub, one of her grubs. They pulled and pushed and shouted to each other, and worked their burdens upward to the cleft which marked their city's entrance. She poised aghast, as with a mocking spit at her, the gaping shaft disgorged another grub. Six sturdy ants came with it, and, ranging up in order, (a pair to tug, a pair to push, a pair to guide,) commenced their long ascent.
The grubs might be replaced in time—what of her precious egg? Downwards she tumbled headlong. Three grubs, the lowest of the pile, were left; her egg— She had been in the nick of time. Her egg was there, nay more, it was uninjured. Her mother instinct told her this as, with quick trembling passes, she felt the hang and weight of it. Her mother instinct swung her round, as down the shaft she heard a scraping footfall. Even as she turned, an ant's black face peered round the lower bend.
"Out thief!" she cried. "Assassin! Bandit! Robber!"
The ant retreated hurriedly, but all that night she sat at the shaft's mouth, and barred the way below with her own body.
Next day the weather mended—a blaze of sun from an unclouded sky, and, on the sand-cliff, ecstasy of life.
Hard work in store for Spinipes! Three hours she spent in raising a fresh tower, five hours in reprovisioning her burrow. But she no longer worked alone. For others of her race had found the cliff, and other towers, twin to her own, were rising from the sand-ledge. Between them pygmy digger wasps dug shafts to match their bodies, and trident-tailed ichneumons sailed about them, and sneaking, prying, jewel flies, here, there, and everywhere on mischief bent.