SHORTER ARTICLES AND CORRESPONDENCE 



A PICKWICKIAN CONTRIBUTION TO OUR KNOWL- 

 EDGE OF WASPS. 



To the Editor of the American Naturalist: It is very idle 

 to criticize the critic, especially when lie happens to be a per- 

 sonal friend! Still, I think the frequency of wasps' nests in 

 I iiifkinghamshire is not part of the wide knowledge possessed by 

 Dr. Raymond Pearl, or he would hardly surest that queen 

 wasps collected over nearly six square miles in the cottages of a 

 I.urkinu-hauishire rural district in the spring could by any con- 

 ceivable probability be members of a siin/h nest dispersed in the 

 preceding autumn. Last year in the autumn I had taken for 

 me upwards of fifty nests on the land of one small farm in the 

 same county. Indeed, in the collection which Dr. Pearl con- 

 siders might come from one nest, there were two or three races 

 present, besides Ycs/xi vuhjaris, when the material was sorted 

 out, conclusively demonstrating that if we obtained samples of 

 relatively rare species we must be drawing from a very large 

 number of nests. In fact, my guide in this matter — an ento- 

 mologist with a very extensive knowledge of English wasps — 

 writes of this collection, "I should not hesitate to regard them 

 as a random lot." 



Other nests are in hand, as well as population collections, but 

 the main point brought out in the last paper, as in Dr. Warren's 

 termite paper, is the fact that the variability of a population is 

 almost double the variability within a single nest. Dr. Pearl as 

 a "pure-linist" would find wasps an interesting study, although 

 I fear that if he attempted to breed with the needful 100 to 200 

 nests, he might experience difficulties — and not only from the 

 wasps ! When he does so, I have little doubt that his experience 

 and knowledge will enable him to replace by more solid data the 

 "Pickwickian" contributions of the much-abused biometricians. 



London, England, 



May 20, 1910. 



503 



