266 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
They get on one’s hat, the collar of the coat, and I have even felt 
them on my ear. If the left arm is at rest, holding the colour- 
box, there is likely to be a wasp upon it, and, if so, it does not 
resent attention, but even enjoys being gently stroked on the back 
by the finger. By next day the food placed for the wasps was all 
removed, except a fragment of hard bread. Left to themselves, 
the jelly would have quickly developed fungal spores, and the 
bacon and butter would have produced their attendant microbes. 
These would have added to the already impregnated air, and 
pointed, in a small way, to the fact that the wasp is busy over 
wide areas under the summer sun curtailing the environment 
suitable for the production of the denizens of the “unseen 
kingdom,” and thus contributing its quota to maintain the balance 
of nature. 
For two weeks in August last I sat at work near a wood by the — 
banks of the Ayr, and it chanced that there was a wasp’s nest 
quite near. During fine days it was a pretty sight to see the busy 
community like a furnace all aglow, and sending its sparks hither 
and thither. I visited the same spot at the end of September, 
and found a great difference. The cold finger of nature had begun 
to make itself felt, and to indicate that it would by-and-bye put 
an end to all except those destined to be the mothers of next 
spring. Buteven at this time there was life inthe camp. On 
the bare ground in front, a wasp which I watched kept carefully 
walking round till it saw a long-winged insect, at which it 
suddenly made a dart. From the oak tree overhead there had 
been blown a twig with the leaves still fresh. A wasp got on a 
leaf, walked over both surfaces and down the stalk to the twig- 
stem, then up the next leaf-stalk, and so on till it had examined 
the whole, stopping to suck and sip as it went. On one leaf-stalk 
I noticed what appeared a little speck of putrid matter, and this 
the wasp removed as thoroughly as if it had been scraped away by 
a knife. A wasp can masticate loose material, but has no power 
to pierce an unbroken surface, or at least it does not appear to do 
so till an opening, however small, is found. 
It is an interesting fact that, away from human dwellings, 
wasps act differently towards people from those we meet near 
houses or by roadsides. In the wood the lunch-bag was no 
attraction. The wasps there had not liearned to look for such 
