142 



THE AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



cies, the Kust-red Social Wasp {PoKstes rubigin- 

 osus, St. Farg.,Fig. 112, a), the sting of which we 

 know by painful experience to resemble closel)' a 

 large darning-needle heated to a white heat, built 

 great numbers of nests in barns and other out- 

 buildings in the town of Joncsboro iu South 

 Illinois. "VVe therefore wrote to our good friend, 

 Mr. Paul Frick of that town, to ask him to ex- 

 amine the timbers of his barn and report the 

 results. Iu reply he informed us that he found 

 great numbers of the "Wasp's combs there, and 

 that, as a general rule, they were suspended iu a 

 horizontal position fi-om the lower surface of 

 the beams of the building; "though," as he 

 adds, " he has sometimes seen the comb attached 

 to a rafter and placed obliquely, so as to corres- 

 pond with the slant of the rafter from which it 

 haugs."' Thirdly, Mr. N. C. McLean, of Coles 

 county. Ills., informs us that a species (proba- 

 from his description P. palUpes, St. Farg.), 

 which commonly builds nests under the eaves 

 of Ms house, always builds horizontal combs, 

 with the cells opening downwards. Lastly, 

 Dr. Packard states, that three diii'erent species 

 of this genus, with the economy of which he 

 became personally very familiar iu Virginia, all 

 of them built their combs " with the mouths 

 of the cells pointing downwards."* 



It would be interesting to know whether 

 most of the other North American species of this 

 o-enus (Polistes) besides the five or six just now 

 referred to, and most of the South American spe- 

 cies likewise, adopt the same style of architec- 

 ture. In that event, as the animajs and plants 

 of the New World are now generally allowed 

 by naturalists to belong to a more ancient and 

 oid-fashioned type than those of the so-called 

 Old World, we might assume that the American 

 style of building is the normal and primordial 

 one, and that the European style is a modern 

 improvement upon it. Perhaps, in the course 

 of indefinite ages, the YcUowJackets and Hor- 

 nets of Europe may improve in the same man- 

 ner upon the antediluvian horizontal style of 

 architecture, which is still universally followed 

 on both sides of the Atlantic by all the species 

 of the genus ( Vespci) to which they belong, and 

 may take to building vertical combs, like those 

 highly civilized and highly developed Cauca- 

 sians among the social insects — the honey-bees. 



As to the diet of this genus (Polistes) , it ap- 

 pears, like that of the Hornets and Yellow- 

 jackets ( Vespa), to be partly vegetable and partly 

 animal. We once observed the same large rust- 

 red species, which has been figured above, chew- 



* Guide to the Study ot Insects, p. 151. 



ing up a green caterpillar some three-quarters 

 of an inch long, as the wasp itself sate perched 

 upon one of the limbs of a tree ; but ordinarily 

 these insects^ like most other kinds of wasps, 

 may be found flying from flower to flower in 

 search of honey and pollen, and occasionally 

 perhaps gobbling up some peculiarly sweet- 

 scented and sweet-flavored " bug" or " worm." 

 As in the case of the Bald-faced Hornet, the 

 probability is that they catch insects as food for 

 their young larvoe, first chewing them up into 

 a kind of pa^D or pulp, and live themselves upon 

 hone)"^ and pollen. 



The females o£ the only two species of this 

 genus (Polistes), that we have met with in 

 North Illinois (P. americanus,Fa.hr., and P.fus- 

 catus, Fabr.), we have noticed repeatedly to 

 hybernate under the loose bark of standing 

 trees; and iu neither can avc perceive any 

 marked ditFerence in the respective size or color- 

 ing of the hybernating females and the so-called 

 workers found at large in profuse abundance in 

 the middle of the summer. So that the distinc- 

 tion between these two forms seems to be here 

 inappreciable to the eye, although, judging from 

 the analogy of allied species carefully observed 

 in Europe, it must have a real existence. 



The following paragraphs from the pen of Mr- 

 A. Fendler of Missouri, woich appeared about 

 two years ago in the Gardeners' Monthly, prove 

 that wasps are occasionally very beneficial to 

 the farmer by carrying ofi" caterpillars on a 

 wholesale scale. From the circumstance that 

 the wasps observed by him are stated to have 

 "worked up their prey into a small ball," it is 

 quite clear that they must have belonged to some 

 of the social species ; for none of the Solitary 

 Wasps ever do this, for reasons which have been 

 already explained. But to which of the two 

 genera illustrated by us ( Vespa and Polistes') 

 they really appertained, is left uncertain. Per- 

 haps species belonging to both genera may have 

 united iu the good work. Certainly these 

 wasps must have belonged to one or the other 

 genus referred to above ; for, with the exception 

 of a single species found exclusively in Califor- 

 nia {Polyhia flavitarsis Sauss.), they are the 

 only genera of Social Wasps that occur iu the 

 United States. 



One of the most tedious kinds of work in r.aising a crop 

 of tobacco is tlie turning over of every leaf in search of the 

 caterpillar, known by the name of horn-worm or to- 

 bacco-worm, so very destructive to that crop . * These 

 worms can be found of all sizes, from that of a sewlng;- 

 iieedle's point to that of a man's finger.* * * * * 



•Mo.st probably the larva of the Tobacco-worm moth 

 (^Sphinx Carolina Liim) . The Potato- wonii , which is the 

 larva of a very closely allied species of moth , long coii- 

 foiuided with the other one, but quite distinct from it 



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