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the mild weather of October and November, aided, I am sure, by 
the hot season of 1893. 
An interesting question remains; what will be the effect of 
this season on the future lives of our plants? In all trees and 
shrubs that are completely hardy the result will be nothing but 
good ; it will be a marked season in their lives and add perceptibly 
to their size and beauty. But in the case of trees and shrubs 
that are a little tender we must speak more doubtfully. If the 
winter should be unusually severe and prolonged, the effect would 
probably be very disastrous ; but if the severity should be only - 
average, I do not think we need have much fear. The abnormal 
growth may be a weakness, and as a general rule we should say 
that such a growth in a sunless summer must be weak and sappy, 
but I think it is not so. The wood, it is true, cannot have been 
much ripened by the sun, but the growth took place so early in 
the season that I think it possible and even probable, that the 
wood is ripened by its own natural growth; and so I look 
forward to the winter with some anxiety but not with much fear. 
I must now bring my long paper to a close. It has much 
exceeded the limits within which I proposed to keep it ; and if it 
has too much taxed your patience, I hope that you will draw the 
right moral from it, and in future years, when you are looking 
out for writers of papers for your winter session, take Horace’s 
advice slightly altered, 
“‘ Praesidentem fugito, nam garrulus idem est.” 
Notes on certain Rare Beetles found in a Wasps’ Nest. By Col. L. 
BLATHWAYT, F.L.S., F.E.S. 
(Read December 12th, 1894.) 
At the end of September I was examining a nest of Vespu 
vulgaris, one of the seven British species of social wasps, in search 
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