346 Wasps : Their Life-History and Habits. [Sess. 



hive roofs, &c, and buried them under ground, of course taking 

 care that there was a suitable cavity and a road into it, and 

 found that in most instances they did as well as if they had 

 chosen the place for themselves. The only cases of failure 

 were where the queen was lost. Only once was I able to 

 take a nest out of the ground. That one I hung under the 

 branch of a pear-tree upon the garden wall, and the wasps 

 made a nest 6 inches by 8 inches before I destroyed it. From 

 these and many other experiments I came to the conclusion 

 that the wasp that made its nest on a tree, bush, or any place 

 exposed to light and the weather, and the one that made it 

 under ground or in any other dark sheltered cavity, was one 

 and the same wasp. I cannot see the slightest difference 

 between them, either in the construction of their nests or in 

 their general habits. Sometimes there was a difference in the 

 colour, which I shall notice further on. It is most wonderful 

 how wasps suit themselves to the place and material where 

 the nest is built. I once found an old nest with a stone as 

 large as a duck-egg stuck right in the centre of it. It hap- 

 pened thus : the stone was among soft earth, which was 

 all carried out, but the stone being too hard to gnaw to bits 

 and too heavy to carry out, they built round, fixing it firmly 

 in the combs of the nest. Once I took two nests, and hung 

 one to the branch of a tree ; then about two inches below I 

 hung, bottom up, a small flower-pot, and inside the pot I 

 hung the other nest. Both nests increased in size quickly, 

 and in course of time became one nest, the one building down 

 until it completely enclosed the other, and there was no sign 

 of trouble between the two families, but both became one 

 colony and seemed to be contented. 



Allow me to say a few words about the wasps' nests 

 exhibited at our December meeting, as it was this exhibit 

 that moved me to write this paper. On the " billet " it was 

 called the nest of the tree wasp, but at the meeting we were 

 told it was the nest of the hermit wasp. That there may be 

 hermit and tree wasps I shall not dispute, though I have never 

 seen them. But I am of opinion that the nests shown were 

 only the early stages of the common wasp, the queens of which 

 were lost in some way or other, when of course the nests never 

 were built to their full size, and the few worker wasps died in 

 the cells. As to size and colour, which some members thought 



