NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS. 267 



orange, but with the normal black markings. — J. B. Morris ; Maldon 

 House, Maldon Eoad, Wallington, Surrey, September 22ad, 1897. 



Vkspa crabro. — I should be greatly indebted for any information 

 afforded respecting the numerical strength of a hornet's nest. Though 

 there must be many nests in this neighbourhood, I doubt whether any 

 one nest contains more than one hundred or so. This formidable 

 insect occurs in such plenty here this season as to prove a positive 

 source of danger, and the fruit crops, especially the apples, suffer 

 accordingly. Only a few hundred yards from the Vicarage, along the 

 Stoke and Nayland Road, are two cottages under one thatched roof, 

 inhabited respectively by two families related to each other, and com- 

 prising jointly probably about fifteen children. In the side of the 

 thatch of the first cottage there is a hornet's nest ; and in the thatch 

 of a low outhouse, on the further side of the second cottage, there is 

 another. It goes without saying that the time-honoured, and as a rule 

 the best, plan for suffocating the inmates, by the application of a folded 

 linen rag, alternating with layers of sulphur, and then set light to, 

 cannot be adopted here, as the thatch would speedily be in a blaze ; 

 and moreover, in the case of the nest in the outhouse, it is believed to 

 be several feet distant from the only hole of entrance, at the far end 

 possibly of the old run of a rat, as the booming sound made by the 

 insects is distinctly heard close to the rear of the building. The 

 suspension of wide-mouthed bottles, containing a compound of sugar 

 and beer, to the sides of the cottage and outhouse, has not been without 

 the desired effect, as several hornets have crawled in, and got drowned. 

 But this is only a partial remedy, and the wasps that have met a 

 similar fate therein (many of them tree wasps, if I am not greatly 

 mistaken) are far more numerous. Another method was for the father 

 of one of the families, to whom I lent my insect net for the purpose, 

 to catch them as they flew out and in ; but this speedily had the natural 

 effect of rendering them furious. I then suggested what seemed to me 

 to be the only available method, namely, the insertion of a piece of 

 lead piping in the hole, so that the hornets must pass through it on 

 their way to the outer air, and the fixing at the same time of the other 

 end of the said piping well into the neck of the aforesaid bottle (now 

 suspended for the purpose close underneath). By this means many 

 have been caught and drowned, including the queen, who may have 

 only quitted the interior on the supposition, or intimation, that some- 

 thing was wrong. The nest in the outhouse has thus been considerably 

 weakened, but the second nest still remains to be tackled. It cannot 

 be seen to at present, as the cottagers are all so busily employed in 

 getting in the harvest. There is also a third nest, within the distance 

 of a short half-mile, down another lane, in the tiled roof of a cottage 

 opposite the short cut across the fields to Boxford, and here the hornets, 

 to reach their hole, crawl along the leaden gutter under the eaves. A 

 fourth nest, situate in the root of a tree in Assington Park, was taken 

 and destroyed several days since. Owing to the number of hornets 

 that fly in and out of the numerous oaks in the wood known here as 

 Assington Thicks, I feel convinced that there are several more nests 

 undiscovered as yet, — probably in the hollows of some of the above- 

 mentioned oaks, There is a little summer-house or shanty in this 



