238 [October, 



strongly incline us to the view that, altlioii<i;h their differences ai-e apparently 

 " specific," there is a direct genetic relationship between them, and that they may 

 be regarded as races of one and the same species. Unless something altogether 

 abnormal happened in the development of the individuals inhabiting one nest, we 

 are forced to that conclusion. For, during the period when the only old queen in 

 the nest was an austrinca, there emerged from the cells males of both forms, in- 

 cluding specimens of rufa varying towards auatriaca, young queens of austriaca, 

 and a worker of rufa ; and it is especially noteworthy that the latest wasps to 

 emerge, long after the nest was full of anxtrinca queens and drones, were examples 

 of rufa. The ritfa males which hatched out might possibly have been the offspring, 

 produced parthenogenetically, of workers of the same form, but this explanation 

 cannot be put forward for the rufa worker, and the fact that some of the rufa 

 drones varied so markedly towards austriaca makes the explanation very improbable 

 for them. We conclude, therefore, that the old austriaca queen was the foundress 

 of the nest, and that both the rufa and austriaca forms are her offspring. The 

 very interesting observations of Sladen ('99) on the habits of colonies of Bomhus, 

 suggest tliat our view is not inconsistent with, at least, an occasional " cuckoo-para- 

 sitism " on the part of Vespa austriaca. For he states that a queen belonging to 

 the virginal! s-iorm of B. terrcstris often invades the nest of a colony of the 

 lucorum-{ovm, kills the rightful queen, and "takes possession of the nest, getting 

 the lucorum-vi ovkers to raise its young." 



In support of our view as to the nature of V. austriaca, we hope to obtain 

 evidence at some time of actual nest-construction by a queen of that form in the 

 spring. We can only state on this subject at present, that of twenty-fhree 

 austriaca queens captured at Fenagh in the spring of 1902, six were taken on a 

 Nordmann fir, among a number of other queen and worker wasps which were busily 

 collecting fibre for making their nests, and gathering turpentine from the fir-needles, 

 as is their constant habit. Sevei-al observers have called attention to tlie fact that 

 F. austriaca is on the wing later than other wasps. (Cutlibert, '97 ; Barringtnn 

 and Moffat, '01). The observations of one of us at Fenagh, however ('03), tends 

 to show that V. rufa is also late in appearing, while its numbers increase in those 

 years when V. austriaca is most abundant. It has been pointed out that the latter 

 has a more sluggish flight (Gardner, '94), and omits a louder hum (Buckle, '99) 

 than V. rufa. 



As regards the precise relationship between Vespa austriaca and V. rufa, we 

 believe that the former represents the ancestral stock of the latter, because V. rufa 

 shows distinctly more tendency to vary, while the rarity and discontinuous distri- 

 bution of V. austriaca suggest that it is the older form. Further, we have seen 

 that V. rufa shows several points of resemblance to the tree-building wasps, and 

 that this is still more markedly the case with V. austriaca. Attention has been 

 drawn (Ormerod, '68 ; Pack-Beresford, '02) to the fact that the nest of F. rufa 

 resembles in texture and construction the nests of the tree-wasps more closely than 

 those of the other ground building species {V. vulgaris &T\di V. germanica) ; and 

 that its nest, usually not buried deeply, rests attached to the roots of grasses, in a 

 cup-shaped hollow. It may be concluded from this that F. rufa has adopted tlie 

 habit of building ground-nests rather recently, though it is of interest to note that, 

 at least sometimes, it builds a truly underground nest (Janet, '03). Then we find 



