Hornet

“ The hornet is certainly not an abundant insect, nor very generally distributed. One may spend years in some parts of the country and never see it. I was lately asked by friends in Kent, who have their lonely house in a wooded and perhaps the wildest spot in the county, if the hornet still existed in England, or really was an English insect, as they had not seen one in several years. Now in the woods I frequent in the Forest I see them every day, and the abundance of the hornet is indeed for me one of the attractions of the place. ”

“ If they had cared to follow the matter to the end, they would [252] doubtless have wondered still more at the strange fate which awaited the unlucky harvest-fly, whose last song had been his own requiem. The sand-hornet is also known as the "digger-wasp," the largest of its kind, the most formidable of all our hornets, and carrying within its black, yellow-spotted body a most searching and terrible poisoned sting. It was a common belief in ancient times that "seventeen pricks of a hornet" would "kill a man," to quote from Pliny ”

“ Now the Lead Friend grew terribly sorry, and making himself squalid looking, he entered the white chamber, rushed to the princess, wept without ceasing, touched her but she woke not, spoke to her but she heard him not. At last he found this to say: “Wake up, my heart’s beautiful love. I will tell where my strength lies. In the silken meadow under the seventh bush is a hare, under the tail of the hare an egg, in the egg a hornet, and in the hornet is hidden my strength, so that I live as long as the hornet lives; if the hornet dies, I die too.” ”

“ These terns, as they clustered and darted about, resembled, or at least made me think of an angry swarm of wasps or hornets; but how different is the anger of insects to that of any other sort of animal! Though so much smaller, they attack without any hesitation or mistrust as to the result whatever. A hornet or an ant threatening merely when its nest was attacked seems an absurdity, whilst in a creature many times their size it is the idea of courage only that is presented to us. ”

“ Without further delay she flies off, carrying it between her feet. Having reached the nest she will mash it up and distribute it to the larvæ.
The hornet having seized a bee acts almost in the same way, but it is a giant of a robber, and the [130] fight cannot last long, despite the sting of the victim. Upon the very flower where the capture was made, or oftener on some twig of a neighbouring shrub, the hornet prepares its dish. First of all the bag of the bee is torn open, and the honey lapped up. ”

“ The hornet, which is really a kind of big wasp, makes its nest in just the same way, but places it on a beam in an out-house, or in a hole which the sparrows have made in the thatched roof of a house, or in a hollow tree, or perhaps hangs it in the open air to the bough of a tree. ”

“ Farther on the highroad looped around a strip of young forest, and she struck into this for a short cut. Here the trees stirred faintly in the breeze, filling the place with leafy rustlings and whisperings; yet it was so still that when a saffron-barred hornet darted through with an intolerant high-keyed [Pg 57] hum, it made the air for an instant angrily vocal, and a woodpecker’s tattoo at some distance sounded with startling loudness, like a crackling series of pistol-shots. ”

“ There is a species of this creature in England—but to the great grief of naturalists, and to the great honor of Providence, very rarely found—infinitely larger than the common earwig, or Forfaculida auriculana. Could it have been an early hornet? It had certainly a black head and great feelers. I have a greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of earwigs. Two hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high. ”

“ This chemical resource is common to all the hornets, whether their victims be grass [Pg 16] hoppers, spiders, cicadæ, or caterpillars. In a condition of helpless stupor they are lugged off to the respective dens provided for them, and then, hermetically sealed on storage, are preserved as fresh living food for the young hornet larva, which is left in charge of them, and has a place waiting for them all. The developments within my brush-handles may serve as a commentary on the ways and transformations of the average hornet. ”

“ Hence I inferred that maybe the hornet went inside to report and to receive orders, or possibly to surrender her material into fresh hands. Her career when away from the nest is beset with dangers; the colony is never large, and the safe return of every hornet is no doubt a matter of solicitude to the royal mother. ”

“ In Egypt an ordinary bee is the size of an English hornet, but the Egyptian hornet is enormous. It is truly monstrous⁠—an ominous, dying terror. It shares that universal quality of the land of the Sphinx and Pyramids⁠—great size. It is a formidable insect, worse than scorpion or tarantula. The Rev. James Milligan, meeting one for the first time, realised the meaning of another word as well, a word he used prolifically in his eloquent sermons⁠—devil.
One morning in April, when the heat began to bring the insects out, he rose as usual betimes and went across the wide stone corridor to his bath. ”

“ Hornet’s Nest in a hollow tree.
[Here is an illustration of a hornet’s nest as it appears in the hollow of a tree. Industrious as is this insect, it never takes needless trouble, and alters its nest according to circumstances. As has already been seen, the combs are defended by a complete cover when the nest is placed in an open [95] situation. But when it is built in the hollow of a tree there is no cover at all, the insect evidently knowing that the wooden wall with which the cells are surrounded, affords a sufficient protection. ”

“ Will you make men love me?"
"Little hornet," said the king gently, "you shall no longer be a stinging insect feared by men. You shall be a bright and happy oriole, and when men see you, they will say, 'See the beautiful oriole. I shall be glad if he will build his nest on our trees.'"
So the hornet is now an oriole, a bird that is loved by every one. His nest looks like that of a hornet because he learned how to build his home before he became an oriole.
WHY THE PEACOCK'S TAIL HAS A HUNDRED EYES.
Juno, queen of the gods, had the fairest cow that any one ever saw. ”

“ Speaking of that, our hornet, which is at the head of the family and genus of true wasps in Britain and Europe, is not only large and splendid for a northern insect, since he is not surpassed in lustre by any of his representatives in other parts of the globe. ”

“ A long blue hornet in a drowsy woodland glade can be a flying torpedo, a death-dealing precision instrument, as billions of fat, sluggish caterpillars have discovered over a very long period of geologic time. ”

“ The Tzirah or Hornet of Scripture—Travellers driven away by Hornets—The Hornet used as metaphor—Oriental symbolism—The Talmudical writers—Sting of the Hornet.
Still keeping to the hymenopterous insects, we come to the Hornet. There are three passages in which occurs the word tzirah, which has been translated as Hornet. In every case when the word is mentioned the insect is employed in a metaphorical sense. See, for example, Exod. xxiii. 27, 28: "I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come ”

“ Since that time she flies about twittering her misfortunes, and does not shun men like other birds, but builds her nest against their houses.
THE SPIDER AND THE HORNET.
Once upon a time some boys burned a hornet's nest because the hornet stung them so badly. Then the hornet went to God to complain that the boys despised His gifts, and scattered broken victuals about in the fields. But God objected that she had no witnesses. So she went to the king of the spiders, and made him return with her to God, who asked if he had seen the boys scatter food about the fields. ”

“ Scand. and Ger. horn, Gael. and W. corn, L. cornu, Gr. keras.]
Hornblende, horn′blend, n. a mineral of various colours, found in granite and other igneous rocks that contain quartz. [Ger. horn, horn, and -blende—blenden, to dazzle.]
Hornet, horn′et, n. a species of wasp, so called from its antennæ or horns: a person who pesters with petty but ceaseless attacks.—Bring a hornet's nest about one's ears, to stir up enemies and enmities against one's self. [A.S. hyrnet, dim. of horn.]
Hornito, hor-nē′tō, n. a low oven-shaped fumarole, common in South American volcanic regions. ”

“ His dry sponge fell, and bounded till it settled, rolling close beneath the horribly attractive object facing him. From the safety of the open door, with ample space for retreat behind him, he paused and stared. His entire being focused itself in his eyes. It was a hornet that he saw. It hung there, motionless and threatening, between him and the bathroom door. [156] And at first he merely exclaimed—below his breath—“Good God! It’s an Egyptian hornet!”
Being a man with a reputation for decided action, however, he soon recovered himself. He was well schooled in self-control. ”

“ To that emotional hour I owe all my learning about hornets. The brute so heavily barred with black stripes that he looks a wicked brown, is the male, who has no sting, and may be trodden on with impunity; the bright yellow beasts are females, with a barbed sting nearly as long as their bodies. ”

“ Bear ate these greedily, although the tiniest drop of their corroding juice will blister the mouth of any human.
Beyond the skunk-cabbage patch, on a limb of a shadbush, she discovered a gray cone somewhat larger than a Rugby football, made of many layers of pulpy wood-fibre paper. In and out of an opening in the smaller end buzzed sullenly a procession of great, flat-faced, black-and-white hornets. No insect is treated with more respect by the wild folk than the hornet. ”

“ Always the first brood is of workers only, and it would seem that the mother hornet is able by some strange necromancy to lay an egg which shall produce, as she wills, a worker, a drone or another queen, for the hornet hive, like that of the honey-bee, has the three varieties. ”

“ The fly grew. In half a minute or less it had grown into a monster hornet. No sooner had this metamorphosis taken place than it frisked into one of the other rings, and another fly appeared in its place. This one also developed into a hornet, giving way, when fully formed, to a third fly. Each ring was now occupied, and the clerics wondered what next would happen. Little time had they for musing, for the third fly quickly accomplished its transformation, when the first one left the ring and flew through the room. ”

“ The Lord understood the trick which the hornet wanted to play on him, and how lazy she was. He, therefore, cursed her that all her work should be as brittle as bits of cardboard, and she should live only by theft. Her habitation should be the chimney, and her nest should be broken by everybody. So has it remained to this very day. The nests look as if they had been made of cardboard, they hang down from the smoky chimneys of houses, as if they were to be smoked; she lives by theft and even upon dead bodies, and her nest is always broken up. ”

“ The prize is thus twofold—that of a drop of honey, and the bee itself for the larvæ to feast on. Sometimes the wings are detached, as well as the abdomen, but generally the hornet is contented with making a shapeless mass of the bee which is carried off whole. It is at the nest that the parts valueless for food are rejected, especially the wings. ”

“ Of these we have only seven different kinds, and with the exception of the hornet they are all very much alike. One often hears people say that they have seen such a large wasp that they think it must have been a hornet, but no one who has ever seen a hornet could mistake a wasp for one. ”

“ Here again is a description of the great Johanna hornet, two inches long, blue-black in colour, and so dreaded by the natives that they will not approach within twenty yards of the tree these terrible insects inhabit. Here is a beetle as big as a fish, and as strong apparently as a man, for he seizes hold of the top of the big pickle-jar into which Rory wants to introduce him, and obstinately refuses to be drowned in spirits ”

“ This pleased us very much; not that we were exactly fond of hornets, but it made it more exciting. No matter what a boy is doing, he always has to go for a hornets' nest when he sees it; and we never thought about being warm or anything else, but just to send those hornets flying. ”

“ The vast quantity of small birds, which feed on insects, show that the river teems also with specimens of minute organic life. In walking among bushes on the banks we are occasionally stung by a hornet, which makes its nest in form like that of our own wasp, and hangs it on the branches of trees. The breeding storgh* is so strong in this insect that it pursues any one twenty or thirty yards who happens to brush too closely past its nest. The sting, which it tries to inflict near the eye, is more like a discharge of electricity from a powerful machine, or a violent blow, than aught else. ”

“ Already the disturbed hornets were coming out of the cells in the nest, angrily fluttering about to learn what the matter was. Frank gave the fishing-pole a swing. He slammed Its end and the hornets' nest right down on the head of the tramp.
Instantly a swarming myriad of the little insects made the air black about the man. ”