Thoreau and the hornets’ nest

On a walk near Vischer Ferry in upstate New York, my mother took this picture of an abandoned and half-ruined hornets’ nest. Thoreau wrote about hornets’ nests several times, including this entry on September 25, 1851.

Examined the hornets’ nest near Hubbard’s Grove, suspended from contiguous huckleberry bushes. The tops of the bushes appearing to grow out of it, little leafy sprigs, had a pleasing effect. An inverted cone eight or nine inches by seven or eight. I found no hornets now buzzing about it. Its entrance appeared to have been enlarged; so I concluded it had been deserted, but, looking nearer I discovered two or three dead hornets, men of war, in the entryway. Cutting off the bushes which sustained it, I proceeded to open it with my knife. First there were half a dozen layers of waved brownish paper resting loosely on one another, occupying nearly an inch in thickness, for a covering. Within were the six-sided cells in three stories, suspended from the roof and from one another by one or two suspension rods only, the lower story much smaller than the rest. And in what may be called the attic garret of the structure were two live hornets apparently partially benumbed with cold, which in the sun seemed rapidly recovering themselves, — their faculties. Most of the cells were empty, but in some were young hornets still, their heads projecting, apparently still-born, perhaps overtaken unexpectedly by cold weather. These insects appear to be very sensible to cold. The inner circles of cells were made of whitish, the outer of grayish, paper. It was like a deserted castle of the Mohawks, a few dead ones at the entrance of their castle....

The hornets’ nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance.