VOL. XXXIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 17 



another opinion, imagining all wasps to have stings; on examining a wasp's 

 nest, at Ham, Anno 1587, in which he found no wasps without a sting. But 

 Mr. D. wonders how that curious inquirer missed of these stingless male 

 wasps. Surely he was too hasty in his examination, and not being aware of 

 the difference, he thought the males, which are but few in number to the 

 labouring wasps, were the same, and had stings as well as the rest; or else he 

 made his inquiry at a time when perhaps the males had deserted the nest, which 

 probably they may do, as the male or drone bees are forced to do. In all the 

 nests that Mr, D. searched, he constantly found male wasps, either many or few, 

 according to the size of the nest, and the number of wasps in it. And the 

 part of the nest where these males were found, was chiefly the two uppermost 

 cells, or partings between the combs, but one. 



Another thing by which the males may be known from other wasps is their 

 antennae, or horns; which are longer and larger than either those of the queen, 

 or common wasps; and with them they seem, in running, to feel more than 

 the others do. 



But the grand and chief difference are the parts of generation of these male 

 wasps, quite different from other wasps. Mr. D. found, on dissection, that 

 they had a sheath-like penis, with a bulb in the middle and a hooked extremity. 



As for the parts of generation in the queen, or female wasps, nothing was to 

 be seen so remarkable as in the male; but those parts are very like what we see 

 in the common labouring wasps; indeed, with the most accurate observations 

 he could make with microscopes, he could not perceive any difference at all. 

 For which reason he supposed it is that most of the writers on wasps and bees, 

 have been very confused and wavering about the sexes of these two tribes of 

 insects. 



Two remarkable Observations in Physic, communicated by John Iluxham, M. D. 

 to James Jurin, Seer, to the R. S. An Abstract from the Latin. N° 382, 

 p. 60. 



Observ. I. A large Omentum. — In the first of these observations we have 

 an account of a large omentum, occurring in a soldier's wife, in whom a very 

 bulky hard swelling had formed in the abdomen, preceded and accompanied by 

 excessive pain and violent vomiting, insomuch that not only quantities of black 

 bile, but even the alvine faeces, were discharged by the mouth. The pain was 

 greatest in the left hypochondrium, and the swelling was as hard as a board. 

 From this swelling there arose several excrescences, one or two of which were 

 as large as a child's head, and another about the size of a man's fist. As the 



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