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THE ‘REV. F. A. WALKER, D.D., F.L.S., ON 
Extract from “ Insects at Home,” J. G. Wood, p. 354. 
“Now we come to the largest and most formidable of the 
British wasps, the terrible hornet (Vespa crabro).* The figure 
represents a perfect female of the natural size. The workers 
are much less, and indeed many worker hornets are no bigger 
than the common wasp, from which, however, they can at 
once be distinguished by the dark red-brown of their markings. 
The nest of the hornet is exactly similar in character to that 
of the common wasp, but the cells are very much larger. 
The nest is usually made in hollow trees; and within a few 
hundred yards of my house are several hornets’ nests—a fact 
which I take care not to mention, lest any anxious parent 
should destroy them, fearing that they might injure his 
children, a fate that befel one of these nests last year. There 
is really not the least occasion for fear. The hornet has a 
great deal too much to do to spend its time in stinging 
children, and, unless its nest be attacked, it is peaceable 
enough. Mr. Stone kept many hornets’ nests at work, and 
was no more stung by them than a bee-master is stung by 
his bees. Outhouses and similar places are favourite localities 
for hornets’ nests. ‘The successful capture of a hornets’ nest 
is a very difficult business, and that of a wasps’ is child’s 
play to it. In the first place, itis much more difficult to cut 
a nest out of a hollow tree than to dig it out of the earth; 
and in the next place, the hornet works all night, provided 
the moon shines, whereas the wasp stays at home. ‘The food 
of the hornet consists of other insects, and it has a special 
liking for wasps. My brother once saw a hornet in chase of 
some Atalanta butterflies, and the instinct exhibited by the 
insect was really wonderful. In the open air the short-winged, 
heavy-bodied hornet would have no chance of catching the 
ample-winged butterfly. So the hornet kept flymg back- 
wards and forwards in front of the butterfly, until the Atalanta 
thought to escape by flying through the branches of an elm 
* Scientific description of Vespa crabro (Saunders’s Aculeate Hymenoptera, pp. 151, 152).—Red- 
brown, head punctured, yellow, clethed with long pale hairs, apical margin of mandibles, a 
line across the face, above the clypeus, and the region of the scalli, black or dark, antenne 
brown, very long in the dg, the joints bituberculate beneath, scape yellow in front, thorax 
punctured and hairy like the head, sides of the mesonotum and a narrow central line dark, 
wings smoky, nervyures testaceous; abdomen rather remotely punctured, clothed with pale hairs, 
apex of the first segment very narrowly and regularly, of the secord, broadly and irregularly, 
and the whole o/ the following segments, except two or three basal spots, yellow, beneath 
yellow, the segments more or less spotted with brown at the base; legs with projecting hairs, 
and also clothed with very fine, short, silky pubescence; femora in the ¢ densely fringed with 
long hairs beneath, anterior pair in both sexes strongly curved. 
L. ¢ 23-25 mm., 2 25-30 mm., % 18-23 mm. 
