222 The Irish Naturalist, September, 



specimen in Dorset (Saunders, '96B). Males have since been 

 obtained by Nevinson ('00) in Carnarvonshire, and by Evans 

 ('00) in the Edinburgh district. So far as we know the species 

 has in Great Britain a distinctl}^ western and northern range. 

 Saunders has called attention ('02 b) to the difference in the 

 relative frequency of the species of wasps in southern and 

 midland England as compared with Ireland. In Berks and 

 Northamptonshire, Vespa germanica — largely outnumbered in 

 Ireland by F, vtclgaris — is represented by 68 per cent, of the 

 spring-caught queens ; while V. atistriaca is unknown. On 

 the Continent, also, V. austriaca haunts mountainous and 

 northern regions. Sweden, Switzerland, the Vosges, the 

 Rhine Valley, Southern Germany, and Western Austria are 

 the districts it inhabits (Thomson, '74 ; Andre, '84). 



Vespa atist7daca was first noticed in Ireland by one of us 

 (Carpenter, '93;, who found several specimens among a number 

 of queen-wasps received from Bray, Co. Wicklow. Subse- 

 quently its appearance in varying numbers in the same locality 

 was traced through several years by Barrington and Moffat 

 ('01). Freke ('96) mentioned that it was '* not very uncommon 

 in the Dublin district," while Buckle ('99) found in Cos. Derry 

 and Donegal several queens and a single male — the first of 

 the sex recorded from Ireland. In the same year one of us 

 (Pack-Beresford, '99) extended the known range of the wasp 

 into Down and Carlo w, while two years later ('01) he captured 

 128 specimens of the male in the latter county ; in 1902 

 again, over 100 males were taken in the same district. A 

 single queen of V. austriaca was found by Col. Yerbury in 

 the far west of Kerry (Saunders, '02 A.). 



Much difference of opinion has prevailed among naturalists 

 as to the exact nature of Vespa austriaca. Smith, as we have 

 seen, regarded it as an ordinary social ^vasp, nesting in trees 

 like V. sylvcstris and V. uorvegica, and possessing the usual 

 forms of male, queen, and worker. In his British Museum 

 Catalogue ('58) he implies that the insects were actually ob- 

 served by him. building nests in fir-trees, and it might be 

 wondered why this seemingly definite statement by a careful 

 naturalist should have been neglected or discredited by later 

 writers. But reference to his earliest paper on the subject (43) 



