50 BIRDS' NESTS. 



worse, for the hornets would then have been 

 able to get into the room; and though they 

 rarely sting any one unless provoked, they are 

 likely to become entangled in people's dresses, 

 or to crawl into corners, where one may lay 

 one's hand on them by accident, and thus be 

 stung before the danger is seen. Hornets 

 live principally on flies ; and in some parts of 

 North America, farmers are in the habit of 

 hanging up their nests in their houses, in 

 order that they may drive away the flies, 

 which they do without injuring any one. Mr. 

 Miller however thought, and so I suppose 

 would most other people, that the flies were 

 the less evil of the two. 



All this time Henry was very anxious to 

 blow his eggs, in order to place them in his 

 museum ; so, when the hornets' hole was 

 stopped up, Mr. Miller cut off a piece about 

 six inches long from a tall stem of grass he 

 had brought from the wood, and having made 

 a hole in the egg rather nearer the small end 



