* 268 NATURAL HISTORY OF WASPS. 
young females in the nest, many of them probably 
impregnated; and their inability to supply the place 
of the queen-mother at once is particularly worthy 
of notice. 
Here the swarm had thriven, and the nest had 
grown even beyond the ordinary dimensions of such 
structures. Another specimen in my cabinet takes 
up the story at a different point. For this | am 
indebted to Mr. Prince, of Uckfield. A gamekeeper 
in that neighbourhood, instructed to be on the look- 
out for anything in the wasp line, reported, m June, 
1865, a nest of wasps of a kind quite new to him, and 
before many hours had elapsed the nest, swarm and 
all, was safe on my study table. This too, was the 
work of V. britannica, about three inches in diameter, 
well proportioned, and very neatly made; but it con- 
tained only drone brood in the cells, and all the swarm 
were drones also. Apparently the queen had only 
laid male eggs from the beginning; and, getting no 
help from her sons, she had deserted them. 
There is no more reason to doubt that the worker 
wasps, in the absence of their queen, lay eggs than 
that they build nests. Not only in abortive or second- 
ary nests, but in regular nests, which no Naturalist 
has disturbed, we may find eggs in the ovaries of the 
common workers. Eggs and ovaries, indeed, are not 
always to be found. We may examine many speci- 
mens without finding any eggs at all, or even without 
distinctly tracing the minute ovaries. And the size of 
the insect is no certam indication of their presence ; 
eggs occur in the smaller as well as in the larger 
workers. But where eggs are they only need some 
particular stimulus to call them forth. 
