COMMON WASP. 257 



1839 was cold and ungenial, and the spring of that 

 year backward. 



I observe that the sliding rods, upon which the 

 summer blinds outside my window run up and down, 

 are particularly resorted to by wasps in the month 

 of July, and the wood very assiduously scraped off 

 with their jaws in order to be employed in the fabri- 

 cation of their nests. Both the common wasps (Vespa 

 vulgaris and V. rufa,) and also the tree-wasp (V. holsa- 

 tica) visit them for this purpose. These rods are of 

 ash, and are quite scored in places by the marks 

 left by their jaws. It should be mentioned, how- 

 ever, that they have been up several years, and their 

 surface has been a good deal roughened, and acted 

 upon by the weather.* 



* Any little facts of this kind appear worth preserving, as, ac- 

 cording to entomologists, there has been some difference of opinion 

 respecting the kind of material employed by the common wasp in 

 the construction of its nest. See Mr. Newport's remarks on this 

 subject in the Entomological Transactions (vol. iii. p. 190). He 

 says, "Reaumur states that the wasp procures its material from 

 decayed timber, like the hornet ; but White of Selborne, and 

 Kirby and Spence, assert that hornets alone obtain it from rotten 

 or decayed wood, while the wasp procures it from sound timber. 

 From my own observations I can state most positively that the 

 wasp procures at least some portion of the materials it employs from 

 rotten wood, as I have many times witnessed during the last sum- 

 mer. I saw both the common wasps and the hornet busily en- 

 gaged at the same moment in obtaining materials from the same 

 piece of rotten wood. The wasps even penetrated into the soft 

 wood in several places to procure the material. But I have also 



