364 THE REV. F. A. WALKER, D.D., F.L.S., ON 
common may also be mentioned, namely, that of invading 
bee-hives, destroying the inmates, expelling them from their 
habitation, and plundering their stores. 
The respective difference of size in the sexes is also the 
same in the case of the hornet and in that of the ground 
wasp, the queen in each instance being the largest, next the 
male, and the smallest consisting of the tates or workers 
among the females. Some, however—e.g., the male hornets— 
are reported to vary considerably in size. There are a few 
differences that may be noticed, but these are trivial and 
scanty indeed in comparison of the similarity—IJ had almost 
said absolute identity—of many other habits of the hornet and 
the ground wasp, 
Some of the differences that may be quoted are as 
follows :—Hornets, I believe, continue to work by night. 
The common wasps do not, with the sole exception of a few 
ne’er-do-weels that contrive to knock in late, and even their 
absence is scarcely to be accounted for by their doing 
additional work. 
Hornets, and most happily so, only number one or two 
hundred in a nest. The population of a strong nest of the 
common wasp may be reckoned at 4.000. Hornets will 
frequently make their nest in a deserted run of a rat, or other 
hole in the thatch of a cottage or outhouse, as well as in the 
ground. The common wasps confine themselves more to 
holes in the ground. Both hornets and ground wasps will 
make their nests in the roots and elsewhere in hollow trees, 
and aiso in the trunks of fallen trees, the hornets probably 
being more frequently addicted to the practice than the 
wasps. A correspondent of the ntomologist some time 
back, in a notice respecting hornets that he communicated 
to that periodical, queries whether hornets do make their 
nests in the ground and asks for information on the subject, 
and is replied to in a succeeding number of the same volume 
in the affirmative. I can myself recall, at the early age 
of eight, noticing a hornet’s nest in the ground, and com- 
mitting the very imprudent act, although I escaped with 
impunity, of laymg my insect net over the entrance of the 
hole, which was in a field in my native village in North 
Middlesex, and to which I commonly resorted in pursuit of 
entomology. 
It will be my object in the course of this present paper to 
collate the notices respecting the occurrence of hornets con- 
tributed by others from time to time to the pages of the 
