ARCHITECTURE. 217 
wide a range as the ground-wasps; and this species 
in particular is confined to certain localities. In the 
hot summer of 1864, when wasps were everywhere, 
V. britannica built freely in the neighbourhood of 
Brighton, to the astonishment of the natives of these 
parts. But generally, the only tree builder about 
here is V. sylvestris. In the part of Gloucestershire 
from which my supplies of wasps and wasps’ nests 
have chiefly been drawn, this is the most common 
species of tree-wasp, and on it my observations on 
wasps in general have been chiefly made. 
V. sylvestris (Plates VI. XII.) makes a nest which, 
from a very early period of its existence, has a dis- 
tinct character. It is not a little bunch of cells at 
the end of a footstalk, standing in a cup open at the 
bottom, but the cells and the first envelope are 
surrounded and shut out from view by a little ball 
or bell of the most elegant and delicate form.* At 
the bottom is a round hole, with the edges slightly 
turned out. Over this are laid one or more separate 
hoods of the same slight graceful construction, but 
not reaching so far down as the mouth of the bell in 
which the second coat terminates. The striking 
resemblance of this pretty little nest to a toy-bell 
has added to the many other names of the species 
that of V. campanaria.t 
* V. saxonica, the common tree-wasp at Lausanne, makes its embryo 
nest in the same elegant pattern. I do not know whether this was the 
wasp which inflicted the stings which Fabricius Hildanus records, 
but it has great vitality. A little box of nests which came in a friend's 
trunk, by a very leisurely journey, supplied me with plenty of live 
specimens. 
+ This nest is figured in Mr. Knapp’s well-known ‘Journal of a 
