come out of the egg. Then she closes the holes by a ball of sand, so
that nothing can get in to eat the young grub. Sometimes these wasps
choose a brick wall instead of a sand-bank for their eggs.

"A friend of mine watched one of these wasps in a wall in her garden.
She saw the wasp go into a small round hole in the mortar between the
bricks. After a few minutes she walked out of the hole, turned round,
and went in again backwards. There she stayed, her little horns and
bright eyes being all that could be seen of the wasp. My friend tried to
make the wasp come out of the hole, but nothing could move her; so then
she had to go away, but not before she had put a mark by the spot.

"The next morning she went back to the wall and found the wasp had gone,
and had carefully and cleverly covered up her hole with what looked like
mortar.

"The lady then took a pen-knife and scraped away this door to the hole.
She then put in a fine crochet-hook, and out tumbled no fewer than
fifteen small green living caterpillars. At last, quite at the back of
the hole, she found a small oval thing, something like an ant's egg,
only more transparent. That was the wasp's egg; and the caterpillars
were for its food when it was hatched, which would be in about three
weeks."

"Don't wasps make honey?" asked Annie.

"No; the common wasp feeds her very young grubs upon the sweet juice of
ripe fruit; in fact they like fruit over-ripe, and that is why they
choose plums and pears and peaches that have fallen down to the ground.
It is dangerous to eat any ripe fruit that has fallen, without first