and Relations of the Wasp and Rhipiphorus. 349 



difference in the proportions of the sexes in the combs which 

 I examined : male and female seemed to come indifferently ; 

 and the cells in which they were placed seemed to be scattered 

 indiscriminately over the combs in which they occurred, per- 

 haps occm-ring a little more frequently towards the outer 

 margin than the centre ; and in the case of those near the 

 outer margin, more of them seemed to lie near to each other. 

 As already said, there were none in the queens' cells ; but the 

 greater part of them were as yet unoccupied. 



In three instances I found two pupas in the same cell, a 

 wasp-pupa and a RJn'iyq^Jiorus-ini^a. — a fact which seems to 

 me to be conclusive against the idea of the one feeding on the 

 other. They must have been hatched in the same cell, bred 

 lovingly as larvae in the same cell, and undergone their meta- 

 morphoses in the same cell. Both the pupse in two of these 

 instances are preserved in a phial of Canada balsam, and ex- 

 hibited, along with the combs and sketches of their position, 

 in the South-Kensington Museum. Their position was re- 

 markable. In one of them the pupa of the wasp was next the 

 mouth of the cell, but with its tail to the mouth, and the pupa 

 of the Bh-ipijjlionis further in, with its tail to the base of the 

 cell, their heads thus meeting. The usual black saucer of 

 droppings of the wasp-pupa was at the mouth of the cell. I 

 shall return to it presently, but in the meantime stick to the 

 RMinphori. Both pupaj were sufficiently developed, rather small 

 and stunted perhaps, especially the RMjnj^horus, but all right, 

 no lesion or distortion. In the next case there was distortion : 

 the larva of the Rliiinphorus was uppermost, and I think (al- 

 though I am not quite certain) that its head was towards the 

 mouth of the cell. Its tail, or, to speak with absolute caution, 

 its inner end (be it head or tail) rested on the head of the pupa of 

 the wasp; and at first I thought the head of the latter had been 

 eaten away, but, on closer examination, I found that it had 

 merely been squeezed out of shape, leaving a discoloured de- 

 pression where it should have been, and had dwindled into an 

 unnatural small lump, in which, however, the eyes and mouth 

 are to be distinguished. It Avas obviously nothing but the 

 result of protracted pressure, which had begun to end in the 

 destruction of the parts exposed to it. In the third case, the 

 wasp-pupa was next the mouth of the cell, with its black 

 deposit in the lid (preserved in situ at South Kensington), and 

 the Rhijyiphorus at the bottom in its natural position. Both 

 were unhurt, but rather small. 



On examining the bottoms of the cells from wjiicli the Rhi- 

 piphori were taken (I mean those which had a cell to them- 

 selves) I found more than once the debris of the skin of a 



