30 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
tection of every one who has a garden of his own, 
or can share in the enjoyment of one. | 
The VESPID®, or social wasps, are represented in 
our islands by their typical genus the Vespx only. 
Of this we have seven species, including the hornet. 
The Polistes, which makes its nest without any outer 
covering, though so very widely distributed, is quite 
a stranger to us. We have no representative of the 
pasteboard-wasps of British Guiana, of the mud- 
wasps of India, nor of any of those which hang their 
flimsy structures by threads to twigs or leaves. On 
the other hand, the Vespee are unknown in Australia, 
though well represented in the Indian Archipelago. 
The Vespee, and particularly our British species, 
constitute a singularly natural group, separated from | 
allied species by well defined characters. They are 
large insects; some of them very large. V. magnijica,* 
of Nepaul, measures from tip to tip of her wings 3°6 
inches, and is 2 inches in length. V. cincta, more 
widely distributed through the East Indies, only 
attains the modest dimensions of 2°5 inches across, 
by 1:25 long. Our own V. Crabro, with as large a 
body, has a somewhat shorter span of wings, only 
2°15 inches. With these and a few other exceptions,f 
generally there is no very notable difference of size . 
between the Vespze or wasps, as we shall henceforth 
call them, of temperate and of tropical regions. 
Wasps are delicate, and very susceptible of injury 
* De Saussure. ‘ Monographie des Guépes Sociales,”p. 155. Planche 
XIII, fig. 3. 
t Smith. ‘Catalogue of Hymenopterous Insects,’ Part V. Vespide, 
1857, pp. 119, 120, and plate of V. mandarinia. Tab. V. fig. 4. 
