HORNETS: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 1 0Y5) 
Eniomologist, and also to relate such observations as [ inyself 
have been able to make. 
Hornets are very susceptible of cold and wet. With 
regard to the range of distribution of this insect, it would 
appear to be much more restricted than that of the 
common wasp. Both tree wasps and common ground wasps 
have been recorded in the pages of the Hntomologist, five or 
six species in all, to have occurred one season in a certain 
district in such astonishing numbers, and their nests to have 
proved so numerous in that particular part of Scotland, as to 
constitute a positive terror and serious danger to every 
passer-by. Speaking as a rule, ground wasps are generally 
distributed, tree wasps are probably more abundant in Scot- 
land and in the North of England than in the South, and 
hornets are more confined to the southern counties. 
Frederick Smith, the late able curator of the Hymenoptera 
in the British Museum, speaks of Vespa crabro as local, but 
generally distributed in the South of England. The counties 
in which I have observed the hornet are as follows :—Middle- 
sex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Herefordshire, and Monmouth- 
shire. It is commonly reported to abound near Colchester, 
and the Suffolk parish of Assington, where I noticed it in 
numbers, is not far distant from that town. 
On referring to Edward Saunders’s able and standard 
work on the Hymenoptera aculeata, I find that in his account 
of that insect it has not been recorded from Ireland. There 
is a Solitary instance of its having been observed in Scotland, 
as Mr. TI. A. Chapman saw a specimen at Glencoe, in the 
West Highlands, in 1876. 
According to Mr. Newstead, it has not been taken in 
Cheshire or North Wales. The observation of Frederick 
Smith that he has seen this species busily at work on a 
bright moonlight night is also quoted by Saunders, and with 
this statement my own experience concurs, as at the age of 
eleven on an autumn evening I accompanied the gar dener in 
« well-known park in Monmouthshire that my father then 
rented for a twelvemonth, for the purpose of sawing off a 
fine specimen of boletus from a tree trunk. We were aware 
that there was a hornet’s nest not far off, but had forgotten 
that it was in this particular tree, and the insects soon made 
us aware of their presence, as, aroused still more by the light, 
they flew swooping with sonorous hum round our lantern. 
My companion burnt the wings off one in the grass, and [ 
. Bes . . 
fortunately escaped without injury, having discovered and 
