Note 7 — Chapter XI · THE COMMON WASP (continued)

The ruins themselves will perish. A caterpillar that develops later into a mean-looking, whitish Moth; a Cryptophagus, a tiny reddish Beetle; and a larva of one of the Dermestes7 (Attagenus pellio), clad in scaly gold velvet, gnaw the floors of the stages and crumble the whole dwelling. A few pinches of dust, a few shreds of brown paper are all that remains, by the return of spring, of the Vespian city and its thirty thousand inhabitants.