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 larvae 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 to view, without the 

 trouble of digging for it. 



" On opening some closed-tip 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-larva? 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, aud bees fed on 

 that honey during the winter became also diseased. The hives of so experienced a 

 bee-keeper as Mr. Woodbury were not free from this plague. 



