"I wondered whether any of the wasp family was at home, but the house
was too high for me to reach, so I went away to find a long pole with
which to knock. With my long pole I knocked gently at first, then louder
and louder, but no one stirred within. So I poked harder, trying to
break off a strong branch which ran straight through the top of the
house. At last it broke off, and down came the gray house almost into my
arms.

"It was big and round, like a Japanese lantern. Guess of what it was
made? Just paper. But not our kind of paper; it was wasp-paper. Mrs.
Vespa and her family make this paper out of wood-pulp, which they get by
scraping off the weathered wood from trees and fences. Of course this
old wood is of various colors, but that makes the house so much the
prettier. One wasp comes back with its burden of woody pulp rolled up in
a little pellet. This it takes and spreads in thin ribbons along the
edge of the wall which is being made. Perhaps this edge is dark gray.
Then off it flies for more material, while another takes its place with
a pellet of light gray, which is soon skilfully moulded on to the edge.
Sometimes the outer wall consists of several layers of this wasp-paper,
which is strong and waterproof. Within the wall are many stories of
cone, built like different floors in our own houses.

"Early in the spring Mrs. Vespa-Wasp, who has been passing the cold
winter days tucked away in a warm crevice somewhere, comes out and finds
a site for her summer home. She begins this as a very small and simple
one, starting with just a few rooms fastened to the branch of a tree.
Here she lays an egg in each little room, then brings in food for the
new baby wasps which are in the making. The kind of food which is stored
away depends upon the kind of wasps. Some like beetles, some spiders,
some caterpillars, and others grasshoppers and cicadas.

"As in the bee family, the first children are all workers, because Mrs.
Vespa-Wasp needs assistance in building up the home and feeding the
children. This first home is small, not nearly large enough for the
growing family, so new rooms must be built at once. These are added on
to the first ones until there is a good-sized layer of them. If Mrs.
Wasp should go on making this upper story larger and larger, it would be
buffeted about by the wind and rain, and perhaps broken. So the family
starts a second story under the first. On the under side of the top
floor some of the c