Mallat's construction, via a multiresolution approximation, of orthono
rmal wavelets generated by a single function is extended to wavelets g
enerated by a finite set of functions. The connection between multires
olution approximation and the concept of wandering subspaces of unitar
y operators in Hilbert space is exploited in the general setting. An e
xample of multiresolution approximation generated by cardinal Hermite
B-splines is constructed.