9378 Entomological Society. 
Mr. F. Smith (after mentioning that in a previous letter Mr. Stone had informed 
him that he had noticed a number of workers of the common wasp busily engaged in 
carrying young grubs out of the nest) read the following extracts from a letter addressed 
to him on the 4th of November, 1864, by Mr. Stone :— 
“You ask why were the workers of Vespa vulgaris carrying out the young grubs ? 
I have no doubt whatever that it was in consequence of the grubs having become from 
some cause or other in a diseased and sickly state; they appeared to be carried to a 
distance and then dropped, just as is the case at the close of the season when the com- 
munities break up. There was a nest of Vespa Germanica close by, and my first 
impression was that it was by the workers from this nest that the grubs of V. vulgaris 
were being removed, in order to feed their own larve upon them; but having caught 
several as they emerged, each laden with a grub, I found that that was not the case, 
but that they were unquestionably the legitimate occupiers of the nest at which they 
were captured. This nest became a ruin before the end of August, and that of V. 
Germanica shortly afterwards, thus proving that disease of some kind had attacked 
both communities. 
“ Of the sixteen nests of Vespa sylvestris which I obtained, one was situated in the 
thatch of an out-house, one was suspended from the roof of a temple dedicated to a 
certain goddess who shall be nameless, one was suspended just inside a rabbit burrow, 
and the rest were built in a variety of holes in the ground, mostly in banks by the side 
of ditches or streams of water; several were in holes I had myself formed in banks. 
Whatever hole they may select they invariably place their nest nearer to the entrance 
than the other species of underground wasps. In the majority of cases which have 
come under my observation the nest has in fact been exposed io view, without the 
trouble of digging for it. 
“On opening some closed-up cells appropriated to queens or females in a nest of 
Vespa vulgaris, I found one larva and one pupa differing in nothing that I could per- 
ceive from those of Ripiphorus contained in the cells appropriated to workers, except 
that they were something like double the size, in fact about as much larger as a full- 
grown larva of a queen-wasp is larger than that of a worker. Are there two species 
of Ripiphorus, or a large and a small variety? or if only one, would the large speci- 
mens above-mentioned (which I have preserved in spirits) produce Ripiphorus as it 
ought to be, and are those found in the cells of worker-wasps ouly starved examples 
of the beetle?” 
Professor Westwood replied that there was but one species of Ripiphorus, the well- 
known R. paradoxus ; there was, however, considerable difference in the size of the 
sexes, and it would be a singular result if it should turn out that female wasps pro- 
duced female Ripiphori, whilst the workers produced the males. Since the different 
food supplied to wasp-larve determined whether they should become females or workers, 
it seemed not impossible that the sex of the parasitic Ripiphorus should depend upon 
whether its larva fed on queen-larva or worker-larva. With respect to the disease 
amongst wasps mentioned by Mr. Stone, it was probably akin to the disease amongst 
bees known as “ foul brood :” the cause of this malady was unknown, some supposing 
that it was attributable to the brood having become chilled, others regarding it as a 
sort of cholera. But whatever the cause, there was no doubt as to the malignity of the 
disease: if a hive once became infected, it attacked the honey therein, and bees fed on 
that honey during the winter became also diseased. The hives of so experienced a 
bee-keeper as Mr. Wvodbury were not free from this plague. 
