o/" Rhipiphorus paradoxus. 193 



that of the wasp. I have found two eggs so situated in nests 

 in which I could see no trace, unless this was one, of Rhijn- 

 phorus. I have seen two young larv^ of similar size in the 

 same cell ; yet aftei'wards one of these must have disappeared, 

 removed probably by the wasps, and not devoured by the 

 other grub, whether that may have been a RhipipJiorus or not. 

 I may mention an exaggerated, because abnormal, instance of 

 more than one e,gg being in each cell. I had placed some 

 pieces of wasp-comb with many wasps clustered about them 

 in a box, and so made an artificial nest. After a period I 

 found every otherwise unoccupied cell with two, three, or 

 more eggs in it, several with as many as twenty. The cause 

 of this I cannot explain. Whether I had so diminished the 

 amount of comb that there were not sufficient cells for the 

 queen to deposit her eggs, one in each, or whether I had de- 

 sti'oyed the queen, and some of the workers had assumed 

 queenly functions, which is said sometimes to occur, aud the 

 latter had not the same accurate instincts as a true queen, I 

 am unable to say. But whatever may have been in a morbid 

 instance the cause of this multiplicity of eggs in the same 

 cell may fairly be assumed to be a possible cause in a 

 healthy nest. 



My argument, so far, is rather against the supposition that 

 the Rhipiphorus-egg is laid in the cell with that of the wasp, 

 on the theory of the latter being the prey of the former (Mr. 

 Smith's view). On Mr. Mun-ay's hypothesis, the egg of 

 Rkipijihorus might be laid in a cell by itself; but, if laid in 

 one with a wasp-egg also, we must suppose that the latter, 

 either before or after it is hatched, is removed by the attendant 

 wasps, or falls a j)rey to the young Rhijnphorus-lsiYYSi,. In 

 either case it is a necessary result of the theory that the larva 

 of RMinphorus should be found occupying a cell among the 

 wasp-larva3. No one has ever pretended to have found a 

 Rliijnpliorus-l^xYdi so situated, though it has often been looked 

 for. I pass over as untenable Mr. Murray's suggestion that 

 some of his wasp-larv£e were RMpiphori] I have myself 

 searched in vain for such a larva in nests infested by Rliipi- 

 phori. I shall leave Mr. Smith to show (which I know he 

 has the means of doing) that a larva of RMpipTiorus so situated 

 differs sufficiently from that of the wasp to be readily detected, 

 though I think Mr. Stone's remark, that " the larva is a sin- 

 gular-looking one," would of itself sufficiently establish this, 

 especially when we take into account the fact that he nowliere 

 hints at any possibility of confounding it with that of the 

 wasp. 



The remaining difficulty in the way of supposing the larva 



