On the Destruction of Wasps. 



279 



of 42 having been taken at one cast, but I did not see it. I 

 have had some glasses made at Bedford's Glass Manufactory, 

 New Street, Birmingham, in rather a better form than hyacinth 

 glasses, as shown in the margin, {^g. 60.) * 

 They are retailed at Is. 6d. each, and a 

 pattern is kept at the shop. I never saw a 

 wasp feeding on fruit attack any person ; in 

 fact, you need not have any contest with them, 

 they merely fall by their own weight into the 

 glass and water-trap. It is supposed that the 

 few large wasps which are seen in the spring are 

 impregnated females, and form as many nests, 

 except those which are killed by venturing out 

 of their winter quarters too early. On the 

 22d of April 1820, I took three large wasps 

 on the same window ; and, on the 27th of the 

 same month, I took three more on another win- 

 dow. In the autumn of 1828, there was but 

 an indifferent crop of fruit, and few wasps' 

 nests, and the wasps for the most part were 

 smaller than usual : few, however, as the num- 

 ber of nests were, they could not have been placed in more 

 annoying situations. Three of these were easily destroyed, 

 being in a hedge-bank immediately opposite my lodge-gate 

 within a few feet of each other. Another was under the 

 slates at the door of a stable ; several stable doors opened into a 

 small courtyard forming three sides of a square, so that if this 

 wasp's nest could not have been dislodged great mischief 

 might have occurred. There are no lofts over the stables, and 

 the lath and plaster follows the spars up to the side-raiser ; the 

 nest was luckily below the side-raiser stopping up a space of 

 9^ inches by 3^ inches between two spars. In the day time I 

 made a hole in the lath and plaster with a pole, and no wasps 

 appearing I made a second hole, and found that I had got 

 near to them, when I left them till night : at night I used two 

 squibs, although one would have been enough, and stopped 

 the hole ; then with my hand I soon found the nest, took it 

 out entire, and it weighed Slbs. Not a single wasp was on the 

 wing, nor one to be seen but in a state of suffocation. The 

 night happened to be dark, cool, and rainy, or the destruction 

 of the nest might have been less complete. 



Yours, &c. Tho3. N. Parker, 



S'^i'eeney Hall, near Oswestry, Shropshire. 



* In London these glasses, and other garden novelties, may be had at 

 Goode's China and Glass Warehouse, 1 5. Mill Street, Hanover Square. — 

 Cond. 



T 4) 



