9464 Entomological Society. 



from sound wood by workers of V. germanica, and in pari by paper manufactured from 

 touchwood by workers of V. viiln;aris. From the comb and pieces of comb taken 

 away when the covering was last removed numbers of young wasps of both species 

 (V. germanica and V. vulgaris) were produced, thus proving beyond all question ihat 

 the workers of Vespa vulgaris had not only been assisting in the work of the nest of 

 V. germanica, but bad also been depositing fertile eggs in the cells. 



" I am enabled to add another instance of the kind. Two nests were situated 

 almost close together in a drain at Cokethorpe Park, which I took out on the 27th of 

 August. One belonged to Vespa vulgaris, the other to V. germanica, and it would 

 appear that, at an early period in the season, workers from the nest of the former spe- 

 cies had attached themselves to the latter, their numbers increasing as the season 

 advanced, till at the above date the colony consisted of nearly an equal number of 

 each, as was evident from an inspection of the work, which appeared to be nearly 

 equally divided between the two; streaks composed of paper manufactured from 

 touchwood, alternating with stripes of that substance made from sound wood, as in 

 the case of the two nests previously described. 



" If, as I apprehend must have been the case in the present instance, the workers 

 belonj^ing to the colony of V. vulgaris mistook their neighbour's house for their own, 

 the entrances being so near together, it is rather extraordinary that those belonging to 

 V. germanica should not have made a similar mistake. They appeared, however, not 

 to have done so, or, if tliey did, the mistake, whenever it occurred, must in every • 

 instance have been at once discovered and rectified, for no work of theirs was found in 

 the nest of V. vulgaris. 



" I do not know how the case may have been in other places, but here I have not 

 met with a healthy colony of wasps since the beginning of September. An un- 

 accountable fatality btgan to attend them about that time, and in some few instances 

 at a much earlier period, so that nest after nest perished, till not a single nest was to 

 be found, and that long before the usual lime for the breaking up of the different 

 communities. It was the same in 1854, the last year the cholera prevailed to a great 

 extent throughout the country. Then I took out numbers of deserted nests, both of 

 V. vulgaris and V. germanica, during the months of August and September, although 

 the weather at the time was of the most glorious character, while underneath the fruit 

 trees in the gardens at Cokethorpe Park, thousands of wasps were to be seen lying 

 dead. So, during the autumn of the present year, I noticed that in a row of young 

 newly-planted elms, many of the trees had, from some cause or other, numerous 

 punctures in the bark, from which the sap was oozing; around each of these punc- 

 tures were clusters of wasps imbibing the liquid as it oozed from the wounds; while 

 around the base of each wounded tree lay heaps of defunct wasps. They appeared to 

 sip on till they became powerless, and then to fall and die." 



Mr. F. Smith remarked that he had not previouslj noticed the diseases amongst 

 wasps to which Mr. Stone alluded, but during the past autumn, at Bournemouth, he 

 had found the insects dying and the colonies breaking up in the manner described by 

 Mr. Stone; in August he had found a nest of V^espa rufa all dripping with moisture, 

 and on examination it proved to be full of the larvae of a Silpha, which had doubtless 

 been attracted by the dead and rotten larvae of the wasp. He believed also that 

 Mr. Stone's observation of Acari infesting wasps' nests was new. — /. W. D. 



