50 The Humming Bird. 



males, females, and neuters or workers; but their communities 

 are dissolved at the commencement of the winter. The nests 

 in which they live, called sometimes vespiaries, are either 

 built under ground, in holes, in banks, or attached to the 

 branches of trees. Within these nests, which are varied in 

 size and appearance, they construct hexagonal cells, arranged 

 in combs like those of the bees, and in which the larvae and pupae 

 are contained. A large nest sometimes contain an hundred 

 females, and though few escape the rigour of the winter, the 

 few that do emerge in spring commence to construct a new 

 habitation. 



The males perform no menial work, this is left to the 

 neuters which are always the most numerous and busiest of 

 the community. These are the architects and the soldiers; 

 they build the nests, gather provisions, regulate the nurseries, 

 and revenge insults. Wasps are very voracious, preying 

 upon insects, sugar, meat, fruit, honey, etc. Vespa Britannica 

 is a true wasp, and builds its nest of a thin substance like 

 paper, but of a very fine and close texture, and suspends it 

 from the branch of a tree. 



This year, as everyone knows, there has been quite an 

 abundance of wasps in all Europe, and many were the notices 

 published in many of the leading European papers on these 

 insects. Nearly all of them have stated that the wasps was 

 one of the greatest pests to orchards, vineyards, etc. Myself, in 

 Part III. of the Humming Bird^ 1893, page 48, mentioned that 

 millions of vvasps were feasting on fruits, and considered them 

 as extremely injurious insects; but since then, I have been think- 

 ing a great deal over the matter, and I have completely altered 

 my opinion. I am not at all certain that they are so injurious 

 as I thought. On the contrary, I think that they are very 

 useful, and that it is chiefly due to these insects that such an 

 abundance of fruit has been gathered this year in all Europe. 

 I quite believe that they are the greatest auxilary of Agri- 

 culturists in destroying an immense number of parasitic, 

 minute insects well known as injurious to fruit, and I call the 

 special attention of the Hymenopterists and other Entomolo- 

 gists to what precedes. It is of such vital importance to 

 Agriculture, that we should know with certainity, which are 

 our friends or our enemies among the insects and other 

 animals, that I consider that money and time could not be 

 better spent than in trying to solve this most important point, 

 and more especially so about the wasps when we see that in 

 many European countries, money has been spent largely for 



