BY THE WAY. 317 



From a popular point of view, wasps have been the most 

 remarkable feature of the season, and we have all played 

 'Punch's' New Garden Game, ** Slicing the Wasp." Many 

 deaths from their stings are reported from Bedford, Erdington, 

 Norfolk, &c., none directly fatal, unless inflicted in the mouth ; 

 while a horse worth thirty pounds died from a sting — presumably 

 one only— at Market Bosworth. No cause but the hot, dry 

 spring is known to account for the prevalency of the pest ; in 

 our garden were five nests, in a single Suffolk churchyard were 

 thirteen, and twenty-one were destroyed at Aldeburgh in three 

 days. The Southgate Urban Council appointed an Official 

 Wasp-catcher, who thought twenty-seven nests a fortnight to- 

 wards the end of August good work. The rarer Vespse have also 

 been in evidence, and V. norvegica is reported from Beccles. 



The fourth of the Local Government Board's Eeports on 

 flies as carriers of infection contains much matter of interest to 

 "practical" entomologists, those interested in species directly 

 afi'ecting the lord of creation. How long flies of sorts remain 

 infectious after receiving the microbes, how the eggs of parasitic 

 worms are transmitted to and from them, and the distance to 

 which disease may be conveyed within a given period, are dealt 

 with. Clark and Alexner also consider, in the Journ. Amer. 

 Med. Assoc, June, 1911, the contamination of flies with the 

 virus of epidemic poliomyelitis. The precis in the Brit. Medical 

 Journal of August 19th is capital. 



The Memorial of influential Naturalists, recently presented 

 to the Premier, has done its work. We read in the ' Morning 

 Post' of September 5th: — "A compromise in a long-standing 

 dispute as to the Government Museum sites in South Kensington 

 and their future development has been arrived at. . . . The 

 settlement now reached provides for the grounds of the Natural 

 History Museum remaining intact, while the Science Museum 

 will be erected on the land to the north of the boundary fixed in 

 1899. ' It is only a triumph of patient perseverance, backed up 

 by facts and influential support.'" The 'Times' of the 4th 

 considers the arrangement " one which is satisfactory to the 

 Trustees of the British Museum, inasmuch as by the terms of 

 the settlement the Natural History Museum retains all the land 

 allotted to it in 1899, and the boundary then agreed upon 

 is not to be disturbed," so the very necessary expansion is 

 allowed ample space. 



Verrall is dead ! Unhelm. C. M. 



