468 Prof. R. L. Edgeworth on Irish Vespidse. 



sugar, the shell being partly composed of the surrounding thin 

 paper. I have seen nests in a turf-stack under a window-sill, 

 and in the bottom of a barrel of brown sugar. All the larger 

 nests are to be found in dry sunny spots, but the wasps always 

 seem to like water near them ; they also generally build near 

 houses, or at least in cultivated places ; and I have seldom found 

 a nest in any exposed situation. It is also a most singular and 

 remarkable fact, which I do not remember having seen noticed, 

 that the Vespa vulgaris invariably builds beside the nest of a 

 wild bee, either the Bombus terrestris or agrestis. In about 90 

 per cent, of nests I find this to be the case, and the only ex- 

 ceptions to this rule seem to be those nests situated in such ano- 

 malous positions as pumps and sugar-loaves. It is often, how- 

 ever, very difficnlt to find the nest of the wild bee, which fre- 

 quently consists of only a dozen individuals. On examining the 

 combs of these wild bees, there does not seem to me less honey 

 than there ought to be, though the wasps may be often seen 

 going in and out familiarly. 



Wasps, if possible, choose a sloping place in which to build, 

 so that the earth they have been mining may easily roll out of 

 the hole, so much so that at the entrance of their nest a quan- 

 tity of loose earth is generally to be seen, as if a mouse had been 

 burrowing. Sometimes V. vulgaris builds under the thick ta- 

 pestry of moss that drapes our old banks ; but, as a rule, it bur- 

 rows deeper in the earth than any other species of wasp. Eeau- 

 mur states that the holes of wasps' nests are generally curved; 

 this, however, seems to me to be the exception, and the largest 

 nests generally have short straight holes. It is, moreover, rea- 

 sonable that this should be so, as the wasps have less distance 

 to carry out the earth they excavate. 



Habits. — To observe the habits and domestic manners of 

 wasps, I found it necessary that the nests should be conveniently 

 near the house. Any nest may be removed in the following 

 manner, which I have always employed and found easy and effi- 

 cacious : — Having found a nest about the middle of July, stop 

 up the mouth of the hole with wet mud, so that the wasps can- 

 not go in or out. As each wasp returns to the mouth of the 

 hole, knock him down with a leafy branch and then quickly seize 

 him and put him into a glass tumbler, with a piece of board 

 over it for a lid. When all the returning wasps are thus secured, 

 with a small stick bore a hole in the soft mud large enough to 

 emit a wasp, and, as each of the wasps inside issues through this 

 narrow passage, catch and put him into the tumbler. When all 

 the inhabitants are thus captured, remove the earth from the 

 cells and gently lift them into a wash-hand basin ; then carry 

 them home, and place them wherever you choose, in a hole six 



