302 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XX f I. 



giving my men and myself a lot of trouble as they had frequently attacked 

 us in the dark, and as their stings were extremely painful and long lived. 

 The Burmans call them padus. The nest was located inside the hollow .of a 

 teak tree near our camp (Pyinmana Forest Division, Burma). To show me 

 that they did not attack at a distance by day, a Burman shoved his head (this 

 was at 11 a.m.) right into the hollow to look for the nest and he was not touch- 

 ed. After the nest was well burnt and smoked, it was taken out and shown to 

 me. There were altogether 6 circular tiers one over the other. Each tier 

 was about 1^" thick and was separated from the adjacent ones by spaces 

 about i" broad. The tiers were however joined at their centres to each 

 other by 2 or 3 thin pillars of the same papery material as the whole nest 

 was made of. When looking into these spaces to my great surprise I found 

 inside them a large number of (apparently) the common three-homed rhino- 

 ceros beetle. I could not make out exactly what these beetles were there 

 for, as most of them had died from the eftects of the fire. The Burmans 

 call them " Padu min'' (King of padus) and allege that they are always 

 found in these wasps' nests and that they devour the grubs and young pupae. 

 I am not sure whether what they say is correct, or whether the mother 

 wasps sting and paralyse these beetles and bring them to their nests for 

 food for their young ones.'' 



The above is of interest as the nest of Vaspa dorylloides does not 

 appear to have been described before. Du Buysson, who monographed 

 the genus in 1904, says (Ann. Soc. Ent. France., LXXIII, pp. 617-618) 

 on the authority of a correspondent in Sumatra, that " this wasp 

 exhibits crepuscular habits, flying by evening at nightfall. It comes 

 to light during meals, and makes off with what food stuff it can seize. 

 During the day it appears to be distressed by the direct light of the sun 

 and flies as if deprived of sight colliding with anything before it. The 

 natives have given it a name which means '' blind ". It is very irritable 

 and its sting is fairly painful. It lives in old and very thick forests in which 

 it makes its nest in the soil." 



It seems most probable that the beetles were accidentally associated with 

 the wasps, that they were sheltering in the hollow tree and were driven by 

 the smoke into the interspaces of the wasps' nest, I should be very glad to 

 hear of any other explanation or similar occurrence. 



C. F. C. BEESON, m.a., i.f.s., 



Forest Zoologist. 



Dehra Dun, ISth June 1918. 



XXVI.— MIMICRY IN SPIDERS. 



In a chick-house at Muzaft'arpur a few days ago I saw a distinct attempt 

 of a spider at imitating a Hymenocallis Lily. The threads of the web were 

 to be seen with difficulty against the background and in the centre a cross 

 of two or three inch arms had been made to show up white by means of 

 many cross threads. Towards the centre the white changed to a misty grey 

 colour into which the head of the spider toned exactly. The spider itself 

 stood in the centre with its legs doubled together up the arms of the cross, 

 the colour of the legs being sepia and cinnamon in bars. The body of about 

 half an inch long was for the front two-fifths of a creamy yeUow crossed by 

 two very fine black stripes and the remainder was a very dark brown, almost 

 black, with fine yellow spots and was divided into two nearly equal parts by 

 a broad cross band of cream colour shading to gamboge. 



