;o NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



account of an impertinent intruder on his dormitory 

 who was ignominiously tumbled down the ladder by 

 his house-wasps. They serve to keep down the 

 pest of large flies and cockroaches, and it is amus- 

 ing to watch them at work, both as butchers and as 

 builders. 



On the Casiquiari, when we were one day hook- 

 ing along my piragoa against the rapid current, one 

 of the hooks caught a branch on which was a large 

 wasps' nest. The wasps sallied out in thousands, 

 and the men threw down their hooks and leaped 

 into the river. I \vas at work in the cabin, and had 

 just time to throw myself flat on my face, when the 

 fierce little animals came buzzing in, and settled on 

 me in numbers, but not one of them stung me. 

 The boat drifted down the stream, and in a few 

 minutes all the wasps had left it, when the 

 men clambered on board and pulled across to the 

 opposite bank. Another day I had got on the top 

 of the cabin to gather the flowers of a tree over- 

 head, and the first thing I hooked down was a 

 wasps' nest, which I kicked into the river, and then 

 went on gathering my specimens battling all the 

 while with the wasps and getting severely stung- 

 for I saw the tree was new (it is Hirtella Casi- 

 qniarensis, n. sp. hb. 3196), and was determined 

 not to leave it ungathered. 



Scorpions and centipedes are formidable and 

 repulsive enough to look at I have seen the latter 

 ii inches long- -but their sting or bite is rarely 

 fatal. When it is so, the last stage of suffering is 

 always lockjaw ; and it is the same in death from ant 

 and wasp stings. I have been a few times stung 

 by scorpions, but only once badly, in a finger which 



