NOT long since I wrote to a friend, a nature lover, as follows: “The most charming monograph in any department of our natural history that I have read in many a year is on our solitary wasps, by George W. Peckham and his wife, of Wisconsin,—a work so delightful and instructive that it is a great pity it is not published in some popular series of nature books, where it could reach its fit audience, instead of being handicapped as a State publication.” This end has now been brought about, and the book—revised and enlarged with much new material and many new illustrations—placed within easy reach of all nature lovers, to whom it gives me pleasure to commend it. It is a wonderful record of patient, exact, and loving observation, which has all the interest of a romance. It opens up a world of Lilliput right at our feet, wherein the little people amuse and delight us with their curious human foibles and whimsicalities, and surprise us with their intelligence and individuality. Here I had been saying in print that I looked upon insects as perfect automata, and all of the same class as nearly alike as the leaves of the trees or I am free to confess that I have had more delight in reading this book than in reading any other nature book in a long time. Such a queer little people as it reveals to us, so whimsical, so fickle, so fussy, so forgetful, so wise and yet so foolish, such victims of routine and yet so individual, with such apparent foresight and yet such thoughtlessness, finding their way back to the same square inch of earth in the monotonous expanse of a wide plowed field with unfailing accuracy, and then at times finishing their cell and sealing it up without the John Burroughs. . |