WASP NESTS. 381 



' Mr. Stone has made other experiments upon wasps, and has 

 kindly sent me the following account of his proceedings : 



"I have a beautiful series of their nests of this season's produc- 

 tion (1864), from specimens which are the work of two or three 

 hours, to those which have occupied as many months. 



"But my working communities in a semi-domesticated state 

 within the house have for the last few weeks been going the 

 wrong way. Earlier in the season I had as many as ten colonies 

 of various species at work in the different windows of the house 

 which I have for some years used for the purpose, all of which 

 went on satisfactorily for some time, but the sugar with which 

 they were fed at length attracted a vast number of strangers, 

 which crowded into the various boxes, and at first impeded, and 

 ultimately put an end to the work. Before this event happened, 

 one extraordinary nest had become advanced as far as I wished ; 

 and a second, which was still more extraordinary, almost as far 

 as I desired. The facts connected with these nests are as follows : 



"I had a working community of Vespa germanica in the left- 

 hand corner of a window on th,e ground floor, and another in the 

 right-hand corner. When these nests had increased in size to 

 four or five inches in diameter, I chloroformed the insects, re- 

 moved the shell or covering of each nest from the combs, putting 

 aside the coverings for specimens. In order to remove the combs, 

 I had to cut out a piece from the outside, and when this was neat- 

 ly united again, the empty shells had all the appearance of perfect 

 nests, with this advantage, that they contained nothing which re- 

 quired drying in an oven in order to prevent decomposition, which 

 must have been done had the combs, with their complement of 

 grubs, etc., been allowed to remain in the nests. This plan I al- 

 ways adopt when it is practicable. I then returned the combs to 

 the boxes from which they were respectively taken, and intro- 

 duced the workers, still in a comatose state from the effects of the 

 chloroform. As soon as they recovered from their stupor, they 

 set to work at constructing fresh coverings. 



"I now brought home a nest of Vespa vulgaris, with its inmates. 

 This was placed for work in a box in the left-hand corner of a 

 room immediately over the one just mentioned. Soon after this, 

 I perceived that the newly-formed covering to the nest of the V. 

 germanica in the left-hand corner of the window below was begin- 

 ning to assume a variety of curious coloring. On clipping away 

 the covering when it became sufficiently advanced for another 



