XXVI. 



MISCELLANEOUS NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 



Entomology. 



Bead at Watford, 2Uh December, 1894. 



Tree- Wasp's Nest at Uerga, TVafford. — About the middle of last 

 June a man whom I had employed to mow the grass around some 

 trees in my garden informed me that he had been a great deal 

 troubled by wasps, and after much search (for he had looked on 

 the ground) had discovered a wasp's nest on a Cedrus deodara. 

 The nest was on a lower branch about two feet from the ground, 

 and, when I first saw it, was a little larger than a big cocoa-nut. 



As this was the first nest of the tree-wasp ( Vespa silvestris) 

 which I had met with, I asked my neighbour, Mr. George Rooper, 

 to look at it, and he informed me that the nest would grow much 

 larger, and that the wasps were not nearly so pugnacious as our 

 common ground- wasp ( Vespa vulgaris). Such I found to be the 

 case, as though I looked at the wasps every day quite closely, they 

 never attacked me, and the nest grew imperceptibly and apparently 

 by expansion from within, for I could never detect any fresh 

 addition to the exterior. 



My time being much occupied from the middle of July, I had 

 but few opportunities of watching the nest after then, and on the 

 21st I went on a ^-isit to some friends. Returning on the 1st of 

 August, I went to look at the nest and found but very few wasps 

 about, and these were extremely inactive. On visiting it a few 

 days later I saw that all the wasps were gone. I then cut off the 

 branch with the nest and had them mounted in a case. 



The wasps appeared to me to be darker in colour than the 

 ground-wasp, the yellow being of rather a duller hue, while the 

 black bands were somewhat wider. 



A short time after my wasp's nest was discovered, I was asked 

 by Mr. and Mrs. Osborne, of Widcombe Lodge, Watford, to see 

 another nest, apparently of the same species of wasp, which had 

 been built in the pantry window between the glass and some 

 lattice-work with a spray or two of ivy across it, the nest being 

 attached to the glass on one side and to the lattice-work on the 

 other. These wasps did not molest the inmates of the house, but 

 Mrs. Osborne informed me that they were obliged to have them 

 destroyed, as their neighbours complained that they would eat 

 their fruit. In this I think that the neighbours were wrong, and 

 I am somewhat at a loss to know what these wasps feed on, for, 

 with an abundant crop of peaches, nectarines, and plums all around 

 them, I never saw one of them on a fi'uit, while the ground-wasp 

 is a voracious thief. — Daniel Hill, Watford. 



Meteorology. 

 Read at Watford, 26lh March, 1895. 

 Temperature and Rainfall at Hitchin, 1850-94. — The last five 

 seasons show the temperature of the three winter months to have 



