CLASSIFICATION OF THE SPECIES. 37 
in the hornet. Here, as in the abdomen, we may 
notice varieties of colour, depending merely on 
individual or sexual peculiarities and not constituting 
specific differences. The large convex surface which 
forms the middle of the thorax has its dark brown 
relieved by a broad tongue of a lighter colour, corre- 
sponding to the position of the great longitudinal 
muscles of the thorax. This gets narrower as it 
passes backwards, and is divided down the centre by 
a dark streak of a thin wedge shape. The different 
colours are most distinctly shown in the male insect. 
In the abdomen, it might appear as if the markings 
were reducible to two types. But as these distinctions 
of colour are not connected with any of the varia- 
tions of size so remarkable in the hornet, nor with any 
fixed habit of building, nor with any peculiarity of 
structure whatever, they may be regarded as unimpor- 
tant, or at least as insufficient to build the distinction 
of a species on. There is but one British hornet. In 
this, as in the smaller species, the chief characters are 
borne on the first and second abdominal rings. The 
_ first is marked by a broad band of dark brown, fading 
gradually as it approaches the edge of the scale, where 
it abruptly ceases, and a bright yellow line runs along 
the border. In the lighter coloured specimens second- 
ary lines may be traced within this broad band, and 
¢he truncated end of the abdomen has cloudy mark- 
ings which are lost in the darker insects. In the 
second ring we have a similar alternation of zones of 
different shades, shown most distinctly in the lightest 
coloured specimens. A dark zone sends out a rounded 
point from beneath the preceding ring, then follows 
a broad paler band, deepening towards the edge, till 
