32 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
concerning wasps which are worth recollecting. One 
is that wasps, unlike bees, rarely, if ever, sting unless 
provoked, and that the best way of escaping from 
them when they are provoked is to retreat to a dark 
corner or the shade of a tree. Another is that when 
wasps are killed they should be killed outright and 
thrown away, for our own sakes as well as the 
wasps’, lest the maimed creatures should revive and 
crawl up our clothes. 
But if we look beyond the mere general resem- 
blance, and examine closely the wasps which come 
under our notice, we shall find considerable differ- 
ences among them. Let us over-haul the contents 
of one of those wasp-traps which are made—and I 
know of none more effectual—by putting one forcing- 
glass inside another. First, there may be a good 
many insects like wasps and bees, which are only 
wasp- and bee-flies so-called, and not wasps at all. 
But of the wasps themselves. The several specimens 
probably differ much in size and form. There is the 
hornet, which has come to look after the wasps as 
much as the fruit, otherwise distinguishable by her 
brown colour, which is much larger than all the rest. 
Then the perfect females of the smaller species, the 
future queens, worth so much a-head to little garden- 
boys in spring and early summer, are much larger 
than the workers. And the long slight bodies of the 
drones, or male wasps, can scarcely fail to attract 
notice. It needs great faith in the statements of 
naturalists to handle one of these, in the assurance 
that the slight body and the long antennz indicate 
the absence of a sting. But such, nevertheless, is 
the fact. 
