3164 Insects. 



cimens have been observed in England. During the past ten years I have taken at 

 least fifty females, on the same rose-bed, but never met with the male before. — Id. 



New Locality for Hypena crassalis. — About fifty years since Mr. Plasted caught a 

 specimen of the above insect near Westerham, in Kent ; a fact he communicated to 

 my late friend Haworth, who proceeded in due season to the spot, and supplied his 

 cabinet with a pair : since then the insect has, I believe, only occurred in Devonshire. 

 Being here on a visit, and having taken a trip to Westerham, reminded me of the 

 above, and finding the general aspect of this neighbourhood correspondent with that 

 of Westerham, I searched for the insect, and have this day been rewarded with three 

 fine specimens ; the notice of the capture of which I considered might be acceptable. 

 — Id. Sevenoaks, Kent, June 17, 1851. 



Anecdote of Wasps. — On the 11th of September, 1847, I was walking in the fields, 

 when I suddenly discovered what I at first took to be a very long insect, flying very 

 slowly, about five or six feet from the ground. I knocked it down, and found that it 

 was two wasps in coitu, and they remained thus attached even after I had killed them. 

 The female or queen wasp was much larger than the male or drone, and I never ob- 

 served the difference between the sexes before. I kept these wasps for some time, and 

 sent them by post from the town of Thornbury, in a tin box, directed to W. F. Evans, 

 Esq., Entomological Society, 17, Old Bond St., but they never arrived. I suspect 

 some '* minion '' at the post-office embezzled the box, in the hope of getting some- 

 thing very valuable ; but one can easily imagine his disappointment at finding only a 

 couple of wasps!! Mr. Ramsay, Inspector of the Post-office, was here on a prosecu- 

 tion, and when I mentioned to him the contents of my box he laughed heartily. In 

 the year above mentioned I had nearly a hundred wasps' nests within five hundred 

 yards of my house. I had about thirty destroyed in my home-field, close to the lawn. 

 There seems to be a great scarcity of queens this year. I have seen only one here as 

 yet. On the 27th of April I was feeding a weak stock of bees, when a queen wasp 

 came to the entrance of the hive, and having smelt the honey, she made an attempt to 

 enter, a gallant bee attacked her, and during the struggle I managed to kill the wasp. 

 I seldom have seen a queen wasp attempt a hive, as there is a sort of instinctive feel- 

 ing generally of their own importance and special self-preservation. Last year I killed 

 about thirty at a young whitethorn hedge in May, with my walking-stick. They seem 

 to be very fond of an insect that is found on a neatly trimmed thorn hedge, and also 

 on the wall plum-trees, where I have some seasons killed a great number. I have 

 made an observation, which seems verified this year, that wasps never appear nearly 

 so numerous in the spring after a very mild open winter, as they do after a winter with 

 much frost and cold weather. The same holds good as to the Bombinatrices. I am 

 inclined to think that in an open winter the frail bodies of these insects are more ex- 

 posed to the field mice and other marauding vermin in mild weather than during frost, 

 or else the insects are tempted to move from their hiding-places at improper times, 

 and so perish. Wasps are useful to butchers in hot weather, as they kill the blue flies. 

 Dr. Darwin, in his ' Zoonomia,' relates a circumstence which he was eye-witness to. 

 A wasp seized a large blue fly, and Hew oil" with it, but the fly used his wings with 

 such power in the air, that the wasp was obliged to drop on the ground with its prey. 

 The wasp then deliberately bit off the wings of the fly while on the ground, and then 

 carried off his victim without inconvenience. Dr. Bevan has also related this in his 

 work (in the l Honey Bee,' after Darwin.—//. IV. Newman; New House, near Stroud, 

 May H>. L851. 



