Insects. 2585 



and seeing that the chests in which they were placed were not tumbled about when re- 

 moved from the luggage-van. A large hornet's nest attached to the gable end of a 

 cottage, is really a splendid specimen. The nest in which the Velleius was found, 

 being sent afterwards without an attendant, was utterly spoiled through carelessness, 

 though it was far better secured by its position in the middle of a hollow tree. This 

 latter was brought home on the 18th of October, when I discharged from it 166 

 queens, 22 drones, and 9 neuters ; and on the same day I discharged from the large 

 nest, above alluded to, nearly 100 queens, a few drones, but no neuters. The nests 

 were on my study table, and the insects were compelled to evacuate them by my pour- 

 ing alcohol over them : as they came out I caught them with a pair of dissecting for- 

 ceps, and kept many of them alive for some months under a large bell-glass. The neu- 

 ters soon died, the drones did not live long, but the last of the queens was alive as 

 late as February. A little attention to their habit of flying from the nest directly to 

 the window preserved me from being stung at home ; and neither myself nor assistants 

 were stung abroad, though we took more than six hornet-nests, with no other precau- 

 tion than the active use of a butterfly-net, one person working whilst the other stood 

 guard. They often flew directly at us, but by standing perfectly still, and gently 

 waving the net, they were always persuaded to change their aim, and were caught and 

 killed accordingly. Owing to their building in exposed situations, we found it 

 impossible to stupify or kill them with spirits of turpentine, as we can so easily con- 

 trive to do with the wasps ; and they have the awkward habit, moreover, of being very 

 active all night, running about the tree in which their nest is lodged, and flying di- 

 rectly at a lanthorn which may be in the hand of the too curious observer. Without 

 saying more of the builders themselves, I will speak of the parasites to which I have 

 alluded. I took about thirty or forty specimens of the Velleius from the hornet's nest, 

 by placing a bowl under it, into which most of them fell within a month of the time 

 after it had been brought home. Some I picked off the lowest and exposed lamina of 

 the comb, as they were actively traversing it, and poking their heads into the cells in 

 search of food : most of these were placed in a glass jar among rotten wood in a pow- 

 dered state. They burrowed in this, and I could see many of them alive in March, 

 each in a separate cavity, which he had formed for himself against the bottom or side 

 of the jar. I am sorry, and rather ashamed to say, that my over-care for their welfare 

 destroyed them. Thinking they were getting too dry, I poured in a little water once 

 or twice, and after an absence of three or four days, on one occasion, I found they were 

 dead. I had, however, saved some in spirits, and both Messrs. Westwood and Curtis 

 have been furnished with specimens for anatomy and description. I had no opportu- 

 nity of observing the manner in which they fed on the hornets or their larva?, though I 

 presume, from their habit of searching the cells, they would not have scrupled to 

 destroy the latter. I gave them some dead hornets when in the jar, and some of 

 these were partially attacked, but they were mostly left untouched. Another interest- 

 ing parasite, confined to wasps' nests, I have often met with, but have not yet seen its 

 larva ; I allude to the well-known Khipiphorus paradoxus. One of these I have ob- 

 served gnawing its way through the silk covering of a closed cell, as Mr. Curtis has 

 described, which proves that it had not destroyed the larva of the wasp before this 

 had changed, or was about to change, to the pupa state. I can speak more positively 

 of the habits of the larvae of certain parasitic Diptera which are found in the nests 

 of wasps and humble bees. I have bred several specimens of Volucella pellucens and 

 Pegomyia inanis from the nests of wasps, and several of Exorista devia from those of 



