DirLOPTERA. INSECTS.- 



-MYKArETP.A. 



189 



Beea in otb.er places ; and this year their numbers, as 

 well as that of aU other insects, have been more than 

 the last, arising probably from the stagnant waters left 

 by the inundation. They are large and powerful 

 insects, scarcely less than an inch long, and of bulk in 

 proportion The colour, a red-brown, and in parts 

 yellow, and to me it seems a very disgusting insect. 

 They are very thirsty creatures. They hang by hun- 

 dreds round the filtering jugs, imbibing the moisture 

 with infinite gusto. Their boldness, though less than 

 that of the fly and the gnat, is more remarked and 

 more unpleasing from their bulk. They have little 

 scruple to alight on your plate at dinner, and seizing 

 what they can, make off with it. Sometimes I have 

 seen them flying away with bits of meat nearly of their 

 own size. They are also cannibals. 1 have found 

 them falling to on the body of a companion recently 

 kilk'd, with little ceremony, which considerably dimin- 

 ished the respect I had before entertained for their 

 character as a set of brave and generous marauders. 

 They are well armed. Their sting is fatal, I believe, 

 to most insects, and is painful even to man. Our maid, 

 a few days since, was stung by one,-, and her hand 

 swelled enormously. I have not found, however, that 

 they use this formidable weapon but when provoked. 

 They live mostly in holes ; when they find one in a 

 place to their liking, they excavate it farther to adapt 

 it to their habitation, and they throw out a greater 

 quantity of rubliish than would be easily credited. 

 They once found a hole in my door, which they set 

 about excavating ; but their continual passing out 

 being very annoying, I closed up the bole ; though it 

 was not perhaps right to block up thus from the light 

 of the day those who then happened to be at home. 

 After repeated trials, those who came home from ex- 

 cursions at last relinquished the place." 



This observing deaf traveller then proceeds to de- 

 scribe in his own graphic way, how these wasps fall 

 into tlie snares of certain spiders, which venture on 

 them when caught in their webs, notwithstanding their 

 sting. Kitto watched how their strength of wing often 

 enabled the wasps to get out of the snare. But after 

 flying to some standing place and cleaning himself from 

 the relics of the webs, he has again got entangled, 

 " like many other fouls with fewer legs and no wings, 

 who will still sport with the dangers of which they ha^■e 

 been fully warned, till they are destroyed at last." He 

 noticed that the spider inflicted two wounds, one in the 

 neck and the other in the head, which killed the wasp 

 in about a minute, when the dead body is sucked of its 

 " marrow and juices," and its skin hangs in the web as 

 a trophy. 



Gkoup— DIPLOPTERA. 



This group of insects is so called from the front wing 

 being folded longitudinally in repose. The prothorax 

 is prolonged backwards to the base of the wings ; the 

 eyes are kidney-shaped, and extend nearly to the base 

 of the mandibles ; the tibia; of the fore legs and of the 

 middle pair are furnished with a single spine at their 

 tip ; the tibia; of the hind pair are armed with two 

 spines. There are two subgroups of the Diploptera. 

 In the solitary group there are males and females. In 



the Social Wasps there are also workers or neuters. 

 The females and workers are furnished with a sting. 



This group of insects is widely distributed, although 

 there are countries, such as Africa, Australia, and 

 South America, which do not seem to contain examples 

 of the typical genus of the social group Vcspa. 



These insects are celebrated for their interesting 

 habits, and for the wonderful mud, clay, paper, or 

 pasteboard-like structures which many of them raise, 

 as well as for the wonderful beauty of the hexagonal 

 cells which they construct. These structures will be 

 referred to further on. 



Some of the Wasps construct nests of clay. Of this 

 there is a fine example from Berbice, or some adjoining 

 part of South America, exhibited in one of the cases at 

 the British Museum, containing many stages of comb, 

 all formed of the same material ; and the common 

 entrance is by a long slit in their common envelope. 

 Mr. Ker described a curious clay nest of an Australian 

 wasp. It is thimble-shaped ; the lower surface is flat, 

 and about its centre there is a most beautiful funnel- 

 shaped entrance, the pipe of which is continued a short 

 way within the case of the nest. At the top there is 

 a single layer of cells, constructed without regularity. 



Fig. 69 represents a section of the very curious 



Fig. 69. 



Section of nest of the honey-ixLakiug \vasj> (.Myrapetra scutellaris). 



nest of the Mp-apetra scutellaris, a small wasp of dingy 

 colour, with a marked yellow scutellum. It is a native 

 of La Plata, and constructs a very hard pasteboard 

 nest, curiously knobbed on the outside ; and the en- 

 trances of the nest are very beantifidly arranged in a 

 pent-like form, so that no rain, nor large motlis or 

 beetles, could enter to injure it. The Wasp certainly 

 collects honey. I first described this nest about twenty 

 years ago. In October, 1861, a second magnificent 

 specimen was presented to the museum by rrofessor 

 Maskelyne. This nest contained more than a hundred 

 specimens of a live Mantispa, probably a parasite on 

 the nest. This nest contained honey. The honey is 

 said to be sought after by the jaguar, whose nose must 



