10 
are @ priori less likely to be hatched early in the 
year than the neuters, who are constantly employed 
in building and enlarging the nest, and in feeding 
the larve during the breeding season, and whose 
number far exceeds that of both the males and fe- 
males put together; and it appears from observa- 
tion, that the actual state of the case agrees with 
what we should have been led to expect. 
The tree wasp frequently attaches its nest to a 
beam in a shed, or under the eaves of a house; but 
generally speaking it is found suspended from the 
branch of a young tree, or in a thorn hedge, and 
without much apparent pains being taken to conceal 
it. I have more than once seen a nest hanging over 
a walk in a young plantation, so that it could not 
escape the observation of any one passing that way; 
and one of the specimens now in the Museum was 
placed so near a gate leading into a wood, that it 
was hardly possible to go through it without dis- 
turbing the inmates. I have more often seen them 
attached to larch trees than to any other; but they 
are also found in the Scotch fir, the elm, and the 
beech, and still more frequently in gooseberry bushes 
in gardens, where they are likely to find abundance 
of food’. Professor Rennie, in the Insect Architec- 
ture, (p. 82,) observes, that “ the tree which the 
« Britannic wasp prefers, is the silver fir, whose 
* broad flat branch serves as a protection both from 
“the sun and the rain.” I have seen some hun- 
dreds of nests in young: plantations, which abounded 
with silver firs, but I hardly ever saw a single in- 
e One of the specimens in the Museum has three holes in the 
top of it, in which large red gooseberries were growing at the 
time it was taken. 
