INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 3 
of Hymenoptera, but no Vespz, only some Polistes 
have been found there. Though they have left no 
pre-historic remains, wasps found a place in literature 
early. It does not appear, however, that they were 
at any time regarded with different feelings to those 
which are generally entertained towards them in 
the nineteenth century. They have always been 
looked upon as the petty impersonation of every 
thing actively annoying and disagreeable. Homer * 
draws them, with one of his touches of nature, as 
beautiful and as restless then as now, the same in 
all their habits, unchanged durmg more than 3,000 
years. He makes Asius, rushing out from Troy, and 
chafing with vexation because the enemy will not 
come out to meet him when he wants, compare the 
Greeks to wasps guarding their nests. And though 
the hero does give the dignified title of huntsmen 
to the takers of wasps’ nests, we must understand 
this compliment as half intended for himself under 
the circumstances. The author of the mock heroic 
Battle of the Frogs and Mice,t does not give hornets, 
as Parnell has rendered it, but gnats, covewrres, the 
honour of sounding the trumpet for battle. Aris- 
tophanes { lashes under the name and guise of wasps 
the Dicasts of his day, who fostered litigation, and 
lived at the public expense on the quarrels which 
they made. He terms wasps the most irascible and 
peevish of all creatures; and their want of a sting 
_ cannot purchase a word of favour for the drones. 
For these are guilty of the yet graver offence of 
living in idleness on the ill-gotten gains of the rest 
* “Thiad,’ XII, 167, pécor aiddor. + Book III, v. 5. 
t Wasps, v. 1104. 
B 2 
