506 THE REV. F. A, WALKER, D.D., F.L.S., ON 
of facts, and that the various nations were actually driven out 
of theiv countries by hornets. Let the insects be brought upon 
the land in sufficient numbers, and neither man nor beast could 
stay init.” But then, again, on page 613 he inclines to the con- 
trary view and says, “It is most probable that in these passages 
the word is used rather as a metaphor than as the statement 
of a fact.” As a corroboration of the circumstance of hornets 
proving an actual and a literal scourge, one has only to recall 
the prevalence of Vespa orientalis in and around the bakers’ 
shops in Cairo, and flitting about the walls of sun-dried clay 
in the outskirts of that city, as I can bear witness, in December, 
1883. Again, in the month of February, 1897, members of 
Perowne’s party of tourists, | am credibly informed by one of 
the company, when in the plain of Jericho were forced to 
scatter precipitately while engaged in driving horizontal 
passages into the old mounds of the Canaanite and Periz- 
zite on the westernmost side of the plain under the hills of 
Judea in search of fragments of ancient pottery, as thereupon 
they encountered Vespa orientalis, and found the hornets very 
much “at home.” 
The following paragraph contains the record in detail of 
my own observation of Vespa orientalis in Kgypt. Somme 
account of this insect, as a species widely distributed in 
Bible lands, may possibly prove interesting. In the first 
place, though almost identical with its British congener, 
Vespa crabro, in pomt of colour, it may readily be distin- 
euished from the latter insect in having a larger portion of 
chestnut-brown covering the whole of the upper portion of the 
abdomen, and only the two lower segments consisting ot 
yellow spotted with brown instead of three or four, as is the 
case with V. crabro, Also, if there is any difference in shape, 
\. orientalis is rather the more slender of the two. Never 
having myself come across a nest of this species, I of course 
cannot judge as to its composition, but infer that it may be 
of clay instead of wood from paling or hollow tree, after the 
manner of V. crabro, V. vulgaris, V. germanica, ete., when 
engaged in sawing with their mandibles the requisite 
materials for the preparation of their cells; and indeed on 
the confines of the Egyptian desert, there are no timber 
trees, as arule, with the sole exception of the date palm, for 
any such purpose; but these hymenoptera flit about the 
walls of sun-dried clay in the outskirts of Cairo, Heliopolis, 
etc., and also numerously frequent the bakers’ shops in the 
bazaars. After my ascent by the southern staircase to the roof 
