HORNETS: BRITISH AND FOREIGN. ote 
wood of young branches or stems for the purpose, apparently, 
not only of using the torn-off pieces of the bark for building 
purposes, but that they may suck the sap that flows from 
the wound. Ash is mentioned as preferred; after this 
willow, alder, birch, beech, lime, and elder. 
“(In an instance where I had myself, together with my 
sister, the opportunity of watching hornets at their operations 
in removing patches of bark from some ash saplings by a 
pool in Gloucestershire, we were able to see them definitely 
sucking in the sap from the torn edge of the bark.—KD.) 
Necessarily, where much bark is taken, or the young bough, 
or sapling, completely ringed, much damage is done. 
“Mr. J. Masters, Hon. Sec. of the Evesham Fruit Growers’ 
Experimental Committee, writing to me from Kvesham on 
the 11th of September, in reply to my inquiries, observed :— 
‘It is singular, but here in our immediate locality we have 
had no more wasps than in ordinary years. This, my 
opinion, is confirmed by that of others. The men have taken 
the hornets’ nests this year in my orchard. The nests were 
built in the cavities of two old trees. The powder-ball, that 
is, the paste made of wetted gunpowder, was applied to the 
hole; this ignited the pith or decayed wood, which gradually 
burned the mterior of the tree and destroyed the nests. Of 
course it killed the tree. The usual method employed here 
in taking wasps’ nests is by the fizzy or powder-ball.’” 
Pages 133, 134. 
Netherlands. 
“State Agricultural College, Wageningen.— On the 20th of 
October, Dr. J. Ritzema Bos, Professor at the State Agricul- 
tural College, was good enough to tell me, in reply to my 
inquiries, that ‘ wasps were also very inconveniently prevalent 
in the Netherlands, and also in Germany, at least in the 
Harz, where we were in August. Vespa vulgaris, V. germanica, 
aud V. media were very prevalent: here—indeed, the grapes 
were eaten by them on a large scale’; also, in one place, a 
little boy died in consequence of being stung by a great 
number of Vespa crabro (our English hornet).” 
Norway. 
Dr. Schoyen, State Entomologist, Christiania, writing to 
Miss Ormerod from that city on the 31st of October, 1893, 
mentions Vespa crabro as occurring in the south-east districts 
of Norway, in addition to eight other species of Vespide. 
u 
