328 HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



writes : " Over the path leading to my stables, on the corner 

 limb of a shade maple, hardly six feet from our heads, and 

 within fifty feet of the house last summer was a large 

 hornets' nest. The result was an absence of flies for days 

 at a time. Over the doors of my horse stable was another 

 large nest, with similar absence of flies. A neighbor, a 

 physician, had four nests in his house grounds, and no 

 flies. No one of his family, or mine, has ever been stung 

 — hornets and children are the best of friends." 



These observations are very interesting. The English 

 entomologist, Westwood, writing in 1840, quotes from St. 

 John's "Letters to an American Farmer" to the effect 

 that "The Americans, aware of their (hornets') service in 

 destroying flies, sometimes suspend a hornets' nest in their 

 parlors." Again, in 1869, Benjamin D. Walsh, an Ameri- 

 can entomologist, writes that, " Some persons in America 

 have turned this insect-devouring propensity of hornets 

 to good purpose by suspending one of their nests in a 

 house much infested by the common house-fly. In such a 

 situation we have been told that they soon make a clear- 

 ance of the obnoxious flies ; and so long as you do not 

 meddle with them, they will not meddle with you." The 

 author has never had the good fortune to know any one 

 personally who has used this unique method of destroying 

 house-flies. Under ordinary circumstances we believe 

 the good housewife had rather take her chances of happi- 

 ness among the house-flies than with a good big nest of 

 hornets as kitchen companions. 



The young grubs in the nests of hornets are fed on the 

 bodies of insects, cut and chewed into fine pieces by the 

 workers of the colony. Whenever flies are available, they 

 certainly furnish a considerable source of food supply, as 



