66 
suspicious; for although wasps will often allow strangers of their own species to enter 
their nests without offering them any molestation, though they may have come for the 
sake of plunder, they will not tolerate the presence of those of a different species under 
such circumstances; indeed I never before knew them admit of strangers of a different 
species under any circumstances. 
“On the 20th of July I again applied the scissors to this nest in order to remove 
the covering, which as before, afier joining in the piece I had cut out, I put by fora 
specimen. I then took away the lower comb and reduced the others in size, returning 
them to the box, and placing them in such a position that the insects should of 
necessity produce a vase or goblet-shaped nest, which they did, and a splendid thing 
it is, being, like the one previously formed, composed in part of paper manufactured 
from sound wood by workers of V. germanica, and in part by paper manufactured from 
touchwood by workers of V. vulgaris. From the comb and pieces of comb taken 
away when the covering was last removed numbers of young wasps of both species 
(V. germanica and V. vulgaris) were produced, thus proving beyond all question that 
the workers of Vespa vulgaris had not only been assisting in the work of the nest of 
V. germanica, but had also been depositing fertile eggs in the cells. 
“Tam enabled to add another instance of the kind. Two nests were situated 
almost close together in a drain at Cokethorpe Park, which I took out on the 27th of 
August. One belonged to Vespa vulgaris, the other to V. germanica, and it would 
appear that, at an early period in the season, workers from the nest of the former spe- 
cies had attached themselves to the latter, their numbers increasing as the season 
advanced, till at the above date the colony consisted of nearly an equal number of 
each, as was evident from an inspection of the work, which appeared to be nearly 
equally divided between the two; streaks composed of paper manufactured from 
touchwood, alternating with stripes of that substance made from sound wood, as in 
the case of the two nests previously described, 
‘“‘ Tf, as I apprehend must have been the case in the present instance, the workers 
belonging to the colony of V. vulgaris mistook thejr neighbour’s house for their own, 
the entrances being so near together, it is rather extraordinary that those belonging to 
V. germanica should not have made a similar mistake. They appeared, however, not 
to have done so, or, if they did, the mistake, whenever it occurred, must in every 
instance have been at once discovered and rectified, for no work of theirs was found in 
the nest of V. vulgaris. 
* T do not know how the case may have been in other places, but here I have not 
met with a healthy colony of wasps since the beginning of September. An un- 
accountable fatality began to attend them about that time, and in some few instances 
at a much earlier period, so that nest after nest perished, till not a single nest was to 
be found, and that long before the usual time for the breaking up of the different 
cominunities. It was the same in 1854, the last year the cholera prevailed to a great 
extent throughout the country. Then I took out numbers of deserted nests, both of 
V. vulgaris and V. germanica, during the months of August and September, although 
the weather at the time was of the most glorious character, while underneath the fruit 
trees in the gardens at Cokethorpe Park, thousands of wasps were to be seen lying 
dead. So, during the autumn of the present year, I noticed that in a row of young 
newly-planted elms, many of the trees had, from some cause or other, numerous 
punctures in the bark, from which the sap was oozing; around each of these punc- 
tures were clusters of wasps imbibing the liquid as it oozed from the wounds; while 
