the difference of our winter days; and stop up their holes with leaves or straws, to prevent the frosts from injuring them, or the centipes from devouring them.  The habits of peace, or the stratagems of war, of these subterranean nations are covered from our view; but a friend of mine prevailed on a distressed worm to enter the hole of another worm on a bowling-green, and he presently returned much wounded about his head.  And I once saw a worm rise hastily out of the earth into the sunshine, and observed a centipes hanging at its tail:  the centipes nimbly quitted the tail, and seizing the worm about its middle cut it in half with its forceps, and preyed upon one part, while the other escaped.  Which evinces they have design in stopping the mouths of their habitations.

4.  The wasp of this country fixes his habitation under ground, that he may not be affected with the various changes of our climate; but in Jamaica he hangs it on the bough of a tree, where the seasons are less severe.  He weaves a very curious paper of vegetable fibres to cover his nest, which is constructed on the same principle with that of the bee, but with a different material; but as his prey consists of flesh, fruits, and insects, which are perishable commodities, he can lay up no provender for the winter.

M. de la Loubiere, in his relation of Siam, says, “That in a part of that kingdom, which lies open to great inundations, all the ants make their settlements upon trees; no ants’ nests are to be seen any where else.”  Whereas in our country the ground is their only situation.  From the scriptual account of these insects, one might be led to suspect, that in some climates they lay up a provision for the winter.  Origen affirms the same, (Cont.  Cels.  L. 4.) But it is generally believed that in this country they do not, (Prov. vi. 6. xxx. 25.) The white ants of the coast of Africa make themselves pyramids eight or ten feet high, on a base of about the same width, with a smooth surface of rich clay, excessively hard and well built, which appear at a distance like an assemblage of the huts of the negroes, (Adanson).  The history of these has been lately well described in the Philosoph.  Transactions, under the name of termes, or termites.  These differ very much from the nest of our large ant; but the real history of this creature, as well as of the wasp, is yet very imperfectly known.

Wasps are said to catch large spiders, and to cut off their legs, and carry their mutilated bodies to their young, Dict.  Raison.  Tom.  I. p. 152.

One circumstance I shall relate which fell under my own eye, and shewed the power or reason in a wasp, as it is exercised among men.  A wasp, on a gravel walk, had caught a fly nearly as large as himself; kneeling on the ground I observed him separate the tail and the head from the body part, to which the wings were attached.  He then took the body part in his paws, and rose about two feet from the ground with it; but a gentle breeze wafting the wings of the fly turned him round in the air, and he settled again with his prey upon the gravel.  I then distinctly observed him cut off with his mouth, first one of the wings, and then the other, after which he flew away with it unmolested by the wind.