150 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



itself is actually attacked, or they have been irritated by former 

 attacks upon their home. I have often stood in front of the 

 nest and captured numbers of the inmates as they came or went, 

 Avithout the others interfering. I have never know a wasp make 

 a totally unprovoked attack. Hive-bees constantly do so, and 

 are far worse tempered than wasps. A wasp, on coming into a 

 room, shows far more sagacity than a hive-bee about getting out 

 again. The latter seems to lose its head completely and, being 

 frightened, gets very cross. But a wasp may lose its temper, 

 even when its safety is not threatened. I saw one of them 

 feeding on fallen apples, in company with some large flies. One 

 of the flies carelessly jostled the wasp, who turned savagely 

 upon it and bit off one of its wings and then left it and returned 

 to the apple. 



I think V. sylvestris is perhaps our most savage wasp, and 

 V. norvegica the least so. Indeed, when a boy, I have, with the 

 help of one of the grooms, cut away a nest of norvegica, and 

 carried it home half a mile, defending ourselves with pieces of 

 brushwood, and have not received a single sting. We ran all 

 the way home, and any wasps that were in the nest when we 

 started, came out, but did not attack us. 



Wasps are very gentle towards individuals of their own 

 species. I have seen them, having fallen into the gardener's 

 bottle of sugar and water, and have noticed that when one tried 

 to save itself by climbing on to its neighbour, the latter would 

 turn on it with open jaws, yet if it were one of its own species 

 (possibly its own nest), it was never attacked. Not so, however, 

 if one of them were vulgaris and the other germanica. Then 

 they closed in mortal combat, and I have often seen them lying 

 drowned, locked in each other's grasp. 



When a wasp attacks a large fly, it attempts to disable it by 

 biting through the principal nervures of one wing. This is not 

 as easy as one might suppose, and I have often seen the contest 

 last a considerable time. I once saw a wasp attack a large fly 

 {Sarcophaga carnaria), and it seemed incapable of disabling it 

 thus. The fly dragged it about over the ground for some time, 

 until at last the wasp, desparing of success in the usual way, 

 shifted its grasp forward, and seized the fly by the neck and bit 

 its head off at once. Why is not this the usual mode of attack ? 

 It seemed so much easier than the other. Probably it offers 

 more chance for the victim to slip from its antagonist's grasp 

 before she can seize the neck. 



Generally, a wasp bites its captive almost into a shapeless 

 mass, and then carries it home to its nest. I saw one attempt 

 to fly across a river with an unusually heavy burden of that 

 kind. It started from a high bank, but was not equal to the 

 task, and got lower and lower, until, just as they touched the 

 water, a big trout rose and sucked them both down. 



