HORNETS: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. 369 
hornets have crawled in and got drowned. But this is only 
a partial remedy, and the wasps that have met a similar fate 
therein, many of them tree wasps, if I am not greatly 
mistaken, are far more numerous. Another method was 
for the father of one of the families, to whom I lent my 
insect net for the purpose, to catch them as they flew out 
and in; but this speedily had the natural effect of rendering 
them furious. I then suggested what seemed to me to be 
the only available method, namely, the insertion of a piece 
of lead piping in the hole, so that the hornets must pass 
through it on their way to the outer air, and the fixing at 
the same time of the other end of the said piping well into 
the neck of the aforesaid bottle, now suspended for the 
purpose close underneath. By this means many have been 
caught and drowned, including the queen, who may have 
only quitted the interior on the supposition, or intimation, 
that something was wrong. The nest in the outhouse has 
thus been considerably weakened, but the second nest still 
remains to be tackled. It cannot be seen to at present, as the 
cottagers are all so busily employed in getting in the harvest. 
There is also a third nest within the distance of a short half- 
mile, down another lane, in the tiled roof of a cottage 
opposite the short cut across the fields to Boxford, and here 
the hornets, to reach their hole, crawl along the leaden 
gutter under the eaves. A fourth nest, situate in the root 
of a tree in Assington Park, was taken and destroyed several 
days since. Owing to the number of hornets that fly im and 
out of the numerous oaks in the wood known here as 
Assington Thicks, I feel convinced that there are several 
more nests undiscovered as yet—probably in the hollows of 
some of the above-mentioned oaks. There is a little summer- 
house or shanty in this wood for the gamekeepers to shelter 
when it rains, and for several seasons past hornets have 
suspended a nest from the interior of its ceiling, flymg in 
through the open pane of glass in its side. ‘This year, 
however, they have not put in an appearance there. | 
believe one such nest in the shanty was cut down and 
presented to the museum at Colchester. 
“ During my short sojourn at this vicarage [ have captured 
twelve hornets with my net as they came successively to. 
regale themselves on the sap exuding from the trunk of an 
oak in the back shrubbery. I note that there is hardly ever 
more than one hornet at a time, either where the sap exudes, 
or on a partially devoured apple. Probably there is not 
2B 
