120 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society Vol. XIV 
with young in the nest that are killed by the cold; they do not 
prepare with that economy of labor and material with which 
some other insects meet the advancing season. The nests of 
Vespa maculata are made of old wood macerated by the builder, 
and are attached not only to the branches and trunks of trees, 
but to buildings, and sometimes to large boulders and to cliffs. 
Occasionally they do not allow room for the proper develop- 
ment of the nest, and I have found at least one that had no paper 
between the lower comb and the ground; it had been started too 
low down. On June 13, 1915, we found a thick paper sign on 
one of the trees in Letchworth Park, Portage, N. Y., that was 
being gradually gnawed to pieces by a Vespa maculata to make 
paper for her own nest. She had torn off the surface of the 
sign along one edge for about ten inches over a space about an 
inch and one-half wide. Vespa diabolica also makes its nest of 
old or weathered wood, whereas the large imported Vespa 
crabro, not uncommon on Staten Island, which nests in hollow 
trees and like places, and our native Vespa communis make their 
nests of new wood. I have two nests of this last, one found 
under a log lying on the ground on Gardiner’s Island, N. Y., 
July 17, 1918, at which time the queen only was present, but 
later two workers hatched from the nest. The other communis 
nest was in a cell under a stone at Clayton, Ga., June, 1909, at 
which time only the queen was found. Vespa crabro makes its — 
new wood nest usually from the living bark of lilac bushes and 
ash trees, and as the wasps often select a certain plant, which 
they visit again and again, they may become quite destructive. 
In The Guide of Nature for June, 1917, May, 1918, and Sep- 
tember, 1918, there are illustrations of so-called “beaked nests,” 
that is Vespa nests with a more or less extended tube at the en- 
trance at the bottom of the structures. This tube offers protec- 
tion to the small chamber within, and is removed when the nest 
is enlarged; I have never found them on any but small nests. 
This also agrees with the observations of Miss Host, whose re- 
markable nest from Ohio is shown in the September number of 
the magazine above referred to. While this nest is about two 
inches in length, the tube is a little over four and one-half inches. 
