& 
256 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
dent that I happened to select the wasps in which 
these were found for dissection. 
In tropical countries wasps suffer much from fun- 
gous excrescences growing from their spiracles; 
crippling their movements, and ultimately destroying 
life. I have never seen these in English wasps; but 
a similar disease, under the name of muscardine, is 
very destructive to silk-worms, and what is of much 
less importance, to house-flies, in autumn. The 
fungous excrescence ‘of the wasp seems, however, 
from De Saussure’s figures, to be a much more sub- 
stantial growth than that of the house-fly, or the 
silk-worm. In all these instances the spores of the 
fungus, Botrytis or Spheria, as the case may be, gain 
admission through the spiracles into the air-passages 
and germinate there.* 
* See ‘De Saussure Guépes Sociales,’ Chap. IX, for an admirable 
summary of what has been observed on this subject ; also ‘ Planches’ 
V, fig. 9; XI, fig. 5. Also, Carpenter’s ‘Principles of General and 
Comparative Physiology,’ 2nd ed., § 97; and Berkeley’s ‘ Introduction 
to Cryptogamic Botany, 1857, p. 237. Spheria Robertsii, growing 
like a horn from a New Zealand caterpillar, is figured in Lindley’s 
‘Vegetable Kingdom,’ 2nd ed., p. 40. 
