106 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. XI 



therefore, that the old austriaca queen was the foundress of the 

 nest, and that both the rufa and austriaca form are her offspring. 

 ... As regards the precise relationship between V. austriaca and 

 V. rufa we believe that the former represents the ancestral stock 

 of the latter, because V. rufa shows distinctly more tendency to 

 vary, while the rarity and discontinuous distribution of V. aus- 

 triaca suggest that it is the older form. . . . Moreover, as all the 

 workers of these wasps are clearly referable to V. rufa, it seems 

 that V. austriaca points us back to a time in the history of the 

 race before the worker had become differentiated from the queen." 

 The authors believe that, if their view be estabhshed, the develop- 

 ment of rufa offspring from austriaca parents would be a very 

 striking instance of "discontinuous variation," as the structural 

 differences between the two wasps are quite sufficient to warrant 

 " specific " distinction in the ordinary sense of the term. 



Unfortunately the facts on which Carpenter and Pack-Beres- 

 ford base their theory are very feeble, and they can just as well 

 be explained by the ordinary inquiline theory. 



I have given at length the opinions held by different writers, 

 because I believe that the discovery of V. austriaca in North 

 America may, perhaps, furnish some evidence to support one or 

 another of the preceding theories. In fact the sudden appear- 

 ance of this species in the New World is in itself well worthy of 

 study. It is not likely that this wasp has been overlooked so 

 many years in this country, for several of the larger collections 

 which I have examined do not contain a single specimen of it. It 

 is therefore most probably a recent immigrant from Europe. 

 However, the capture of 3 5$, in very fresh condition, in two 

 different localities, makes it improbable that these specimens were 

 imported as adult insects or even in the pupal stage. I am rather 

 inchned to believe that the species is already in some way con- 

 nected with one of the American wasps. No supposition as to 

 the nature of these relations can be made at present. As seen 

 above, direct observation showed in Europe that V. austriaca is 

 associated with V. rufa, but the latter insect has never been found 

 in the Eastern United States. 



