le in the ground; so one evening when they'd all gone
to bed we got some pitch and brimstone, and laid them with some lighted
sticks on the top of the hole. The wasps woke up, and came out to see
what was going on; but they were smothered by the brimstone smoke, and
were soon done for. The next day we dug out the nest.

"Wasps are great pests, Master Jack, I can tell you. They are very fond
of honey, and they go into the bee-hives to steal it, especially when
the mornings and evenings get cool, and the bees are not watching at the
holes of their hives, because they've gone inside to keep themselves
warm.

"The wasps spoil a lot of fruit. If there's one peach finer than
another, they know it; and as for the plums, green-gages in particular,
why, they are as mad after them as the birds are for the cherries. What
with the caterpillars and slugs being after the vegetables, and the
birds and the wasps making such havoc with the fruit, I wonder sometimes
how we ever get any for ourselves."

"There always seems plenty of fruit and vegetables, though," said Jack.

"Well, yes," said the gardener, "maybe. The birds do help us with
caterpillars and slugs, I'm bound to own; and then we are always on the
look-out to destroy wasps: and as to the birds, I dodge them with
netting; and sometimes we take the nests out of the fruit-trees, as much
as to tell them to go elsewhere."

That evening Jack went into the gardener's cottage and saw the wasp's
nest. It looked like the cells of bees made in whity-brown paper.

"What is it made of?" asked Jack; "it isn't wax."

"Well, I've heard that the wasp, which has very strong jaws, bites bits
of wood off posts and rails, and moistens them by chewing them into a
kind of paper, and then makes a comb of it like what you see here."

"I wish I had seen this wasp's nest taken."

"No, Master Jack; why, you'd be in bed at that time: besides, I don't
suppose your grandmamma would have let you go, even if you had been
here, for you might have been stung. It's rather a touchy job, is taking
a wasp's nest,--very different from hiving bees; we give them a home,
but we take one from the wasps.

"If the queen bee falls into the new hive, the bees are right
enough--they are sure to go where she is; but the wasps are naturally
angered and frightened at being suffocated out of their home. So, I say,
keep clear of wasps' nests; those jobs are best done on the quiet."

"Was anybody stung when this nest