EXPERIMENTAL INQUIRIES. 259 
other. I have seen a secondary nest of V. britannica, 
the species on which these observations were chiefly 
made, with as many as eleven successive layers thus 
disposed. ° Again, the new comb differs from the 
original structure. The formation of the cells is less 
regular, and the stages are arranged differently. 
Instead of the case being filled with these, closely 
packed one below the other, the stages which it 
contains, one, or at most two, have a large unoccupied 
space below them. In fact, the usual order has been 
reversed, the comb was made to go inside the case, 
as the work went on hurriedly and irregularly, and 
not the case to cover the comb. And the resem- 
blance, which appears on the surface, does not enter 
very deeply into the construction of the nest. 
Each time that the nest is replaced it differs 
more and more from the original type. It becomes 
smaller, less shapely, and has less pretensions to any- 
thing like a regular comb within. After it has been 
destroyed three or four times, the survivors make no 
further attempts to replace it. Perhaps some little 
scraps of paper, forming a hood over half-a-dozen 
cells, represent the last efforts of the diminished 
swarm. Some few wasps will haunt round this, day 
after day, till, as their numbers decrease, only three 
or four workers are left as the guardians of as many 
abortive larvee, or a heavy shower puts an end at 
once to the struggles of the colony. 
I have in my cabinet a series of nests,* made by 
one swarm of V. britannica, the successive specimens 
indicating the failing strength of the survivors of the 
successive operations. The second is made of the 
* Plate XIIT. 
$2 
