Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1898 — The Paper Makers. [ARTICLE]

The Paper Makers.

One morning In early summer, while standing beside an old rail fence watching some cows that were crapping the grass, my attention was attracted by the peculiar movements of a wasp that settled on the rail beside me. The rail was covered with a light gray fuzz of woody fibre beaten up from the decaying wood by the excessive soakings it had received from the long spring rains, and when the wasp had gathered as much of this as he could carry he slowly flew away. In a short time there were a dozen or more of those industrious pulp gatherers at work on the old rail, and as fast as each of them ob tained a load, away he flew in the direction of a dump of bujties that grew beside a small stream. My curiosity was aroused, and I determined to find out if possible whalj they were doing with such a quantity of fibefj and, approaching the thicket cautiously, I soon discovered them at work on a good-sized nest which hung from the limb of a white beech sapling. I was able to get quite near it, for wasps are not apt to be quarrelsome if left alone, and these were too busy to take heed of anything except their work. , As fast as their loads were deposited they flew down to the brook, and, having “wet their whistle,” returned to the nest and settled about beating the fiber into a thin sheet, which was so deftly joined to the main body of the nest that the jointure was Imperceptible. There was a constant throng of workers coming and going, the objective points being the nest, the old fence, and the brook, and while each addition to the structure was only the tiniest mite, yet it grew perceptibly under the united efforts of those little builders.