IQO NOTES ON THE SEASONS OF 1 893, 



With regard to insects, we are only in a position to discuss a 

 very few species, because the habits of so few forms have been 

 studied with sufficient care from year to year to enable us to 

 institute a comparison. Bees stand out as an exception, and the 

 season has left its impress upon that exception. It may be summed 

 up by saying that no "swarming" occurred. The wherefore of this is 

 not known. We can only say that for some reason the queens were 

 not prolific, and as food is known to affect the entire organism of 

 the queen, it is probable that a scarcity of certain food brought 

 about that untoward result. We have here a case in which local 

 extinction might have occurred had it not been for artificial care, 

 and some experienced bee-keepers are even now fearing the results 

 of wintering their stocks, which are known to be weak. 



Wasps, on the other hand, multiplied to such an extent as to 

 have been aptly described as a plague. The reason undoubtedly 

 was due to the fair weather in the spring allowing almost every 

 mother-wasp to rear a progeny. These stand on a very different 

 footing to bees, for every mother or queen-wasp is the equivalent, in 

 the spring, of a whole hive or stock of bees, and has to perform in 

 her own person the functions of that entire colony. The mother - 

 wasp may have been more or even less prolific than ordinary, but no 

 observations have, so far as we know, been made. 



Hot and prolonged summers are generally looked upon as being 

 the nursing mothers of vast swarms of aphides and other insects of 

 an Egyptian plague character; but it is perhaps worth remarking 

 that nothing much above the normal appears to have been noticed 

 except in the case of wasps, and even they were local. 



The extreme dry weather most certainly affected a part of the 

 molluscan fauna in a peculiar manner. In the case of land-shells 

 the period of enforced rest was much prolonged, there being no 

 dews at night. Whether this had a deleterious effect we do not 

 know. Some fresh-water molluscs must have suffered a serious 

 diminution in numbers where the ditches and ponds dried up, I 

 watched with particular care a very small colony of Limneids 

 {Lymncca palustris var. (orviis), which had during the past few 

 years dwindled down to probably less than a dozen individuals. 

 Three of these, which was all I could find, I carried to deeper water, 

 or otherwise I feel quite sure the colony must have perished. I may 

 mention that I saw one of these in the act of pairing with an 

 individual of the normal type of L. palustris. This I think is a 



