Insects. 7261 



tlrocampoB, it was attached to ponds." The idea of its being attached to ponds is cer- 

 tainly wroii":, at least in the imago state ; and I think it can hardly be so in any stage, 

 seeing there is no water in the neighbourhood of its habitat. This insect in habits 

 rather resembles the Pyraustae, flitting about in short flights during sunshine, and not 

 easily approached in shade. The locality for it is a high, sloping down, where the 

 furze and fern are the principal occupants of vegetable growth, but there are also the 

 usual plants that cover a Devonshire down, heath or moor ; some fine clumps of 

 Ericte are there, and " I know a bank a whereon the wild thyme blows." I can 

 safely advise those who may wish to take the species to look for it in a dry place. — 

 /. J. Reading ; Plymouth. 



Vespid(B in 1860. By S. Stone, Esq., Hon. Member Ashmolean 

 Society. 



It may with truth be remarked that we have passed through an 

 entire year of which neither spring nor summer has formed any portion, 

 the weather having been altogether of a wintry character during the 

 whole of the past twelve months. Had we been deprived of the 

 blessing of sight we should have been completely in the dark as to how 

 the year was progressing : we have only been able to ascertain it by 

 observing that somehow or other the fields became clothed with ver- 

 dure, that the foliage was renewed on hedgerows and trees, that the 

 grass grew till it arrived at maturity, in spite of the night frosts which 

 made repeated and desperate attempts to cut it down and thus antici- 

 pate the mower, that some of it by some means got made into hay, 

 that the corn — a portion of it — became ripe and was gathered in, that 

 the days grew longer, till the maximum length had been attained, and 

 that they then as usual began to shorten. Had we depended solely 

 on the temperature for information \vc should have been sorely per- 

 plexed, in fact we should have been wholly unable to decide whether 

 we were living in the month of July or January, whether the sun was 

 about to enter Aries, or whether it had got into Libra. 



Female wasps, which ordinarily make their appearance early in April, 

 and not unfrequently in March, were not observed upon the wing till 

 late in May, when a few showed themselves for a day or two, and were 

 apparently in search of eligible building sites, the weather just then 

 being bright and sunny, but with severe frosts at night. I at once set 

 about forming a number of suitable cavities in the locality they fre- 

 quented, hoping thereby to obtain, as I had done the year before, a 

 variety of nests, but the drenching rains which fell immediately after 

 I had completed them, and which continued almost without inter- 

 mission for weeks, cut off the expectations I had formed ; not a single 



