LESSON XIII.
A LOOK AT MRS. WASP.
Mrs. Wasp’s color is blue-black. She has yellow marks.
She has four thin wings. Two are large and two are small.
The front wings are the large ones. Her wings lie close to her sides when her body is at rest.
The wasp looks as if she had two wings, not four.
The two under ones are hooked to the upper ones.
Her eyes are set close to her head. They are large.
They have a notch or dent in them. She has two long wands, called feelers, on her head.
They are made in joints. She touches things with them.
Her body is in three parts. The first part is the head, with the eyes and mouth.
The next part is thick and short. The hind part is long and slim.
These two join at a point. It looks as if the hind part might drop off, but it never does.
Mrs. Wasp has a long, sharp sting in her tail. The wasp’s sting is like two fine saws.
A drop of poison runs through it from a bag.
You need not fear Mrs. Wasp. She does not sting if you let her alone.
She has six legs. The legs and wings are set on the part of the body that is next the head.
She uses her front legs for hands. The body of the wasp is hard, and made of rings like scales.
Mrs. Wasp uses her jaws to cut up wood for paper. She does not need them to eat with.
She eats honey. When her baby eats spiders and caterpillars, it does not chew them.
It sucks out their juice.
Wasps bite fruit and spoil it. They are cross, and fight.
They kill bees for their honey.
All wasps are not of the same color.
The wasp that leaves her baby alone is the hermit wasp.
There is a wasp of a rust-red color.