Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/345

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ITTLE has been published concerning the social wasps since de Saussure wrote so interestingly of them nearly half a century ago. His work is justly regarded as a classic, but unfortunately it has become so rare that, nowadays, it is inaccessible to the average student, and accurate knowledge of the group, save that derived from an occasional disagreeable encounter with one of its members, is meager indeed. Moreover, the wonderful ingenuity displayed here, and among the highest Hymenoptera, the care for the young, and provisioning against the rainy day have served, not only to point a moral, but to credit these forms with an intelligence second only to the human. Even those who adopt a purely mechanical explanation of animal activities are inclined to except the bees and wasps. Mr. E. L. Thorndike, in his general conclusions concerning the nature of animal intelligence, makes reservations in favor of this group, while Mr. and Mrs. G-. W. Peckham, in their admirable study of the solitary wasps, contrast them with the social wasps in the following terms:

The conclusions noted here, derived from the study of a group which is among the more primitive social Hymenoptera, may then be of interest as contributing somewhat to problems which are receiving anew the attention of both the naturalist and the comparative psychologist.

In the tropics of the Old and New World, the family of social wasps or Vespidæ comprises seven genera, but only three of these, Polistes, Polybia and Vespa are represented in the United States. Of these, Polybia is the smallest and rarest, being restricted to California and Florida; Vespa is widely known as our common hornet or yellow-jacket,