SPECIES OF WASPS. 113 



remains of the great summer family are a comparatively few females, 

 commonly known as queens, which have left the nest and stored 

 themselves away for their winter quietude in sheltering nooks to wait 

 the spring sunshine for active life and labour. 



Species of British Wasps. — In Britain we have seven species of 

 social Wasps, that is, of Wasps living together in societies formed of 



Vespa vdlgabis. — Largest specimen, queen, or female ; specimen to left-hand, with 

 long horns, drone, or male ; right-hand specimen, neuter, or worker. 



males, females, and neuters, or abortive females, commonly known, 

 respectively, as drones, queens, and workers. 



The seven kinds of Wasps are divided into two sections of Ground 

 Wasps and Tree Wasps, according to whether their nests are customarily 

 formed in a hollow in the ground, or suspended in the air from a 

 bough, or in a hedge, or, as with our largest species, the Vesjm crabro, 

 the splendid insect known as the " Hornet," the nests may be found 

 in decayed trees, in roots, under eaves, or, as I have myself found it, 

 down in the ground by a small post of a field paling. 



The species of the Ground-building Wasps are the Vespa vuhjaris, 

 Linn, (see figure) ; the V. (jermanica, Fabr. ; and the F. rufa, Linn., 

 which is somewhat smaller, as regards the queens and workers, than 

 the two preceding kinds, but variously marked, especially on the two 

 first segments of the abdomen, with a red tinge. As I have seen it 

 (especially on one occasion when, by mishap, I had to hold the entire 

 colony of a disturbed nest down on the ground within my ring-net to 

 enable my unwasp-protected colleague to escape), the difierence in tint 

 is a very fair general distinction. 



Of the four species of "Tree Wasps," the most common are the 

 Vespa sylvestris, Scop., and the V. norvetjica, Fab. (the V. hritannica, of 

 Leach) ; of these the first is widely distributed, the second is not so 

 common in England, but said to be abundant in Scotland. The 

 F. arbor ea is so very rare that it hardly needs mention. I was, how- 

 ever, fortunate enough to find two specimens at Sedbury Park in the 



