Insects. 



8661 



past : a band of marauders in the shape of woodlice, had been allowed 

 to penetrate the covering and domicile themselves in different parts, 

 notwithstanding that the queen and working wasps appeared to be 

 healthy and tolerably active. 



On the 16th I took out a nest of V. germanica, the crown of which 

 was covered with eggs of the same description as those observed on 

 that procured on the 13th. 



On the 1 7th I took out another nest of V. germanica, on which 

 numbers of eggs similar to those above mentioned had been deposited. 

 After divesting this nest of its covering, the combs with the colony 

 were placed in a glazed box and removed to the window of a room in 

 the house in which I reside, liberty being given to the insects to pass 

 in and out through an opening in the window. They were not sup- 

 plied with sugar, lest it should attract too great a crowd from other 

 quarters, the consequence of which was that they, one and all, posi- 

 tively declined to have anything to do with nest-building, larva- 

 feeding or any other kind of work, but remained crowded together 

 day after day between the combs, or crawled listlessly about the box. 

 Things went on in this way till the 25th, when, finding that both the 

 larvae and the perfect insects were rapidly approaching a state of 

 starvation, I put two or three table-spoonfuls of sugar into the box: 

 the effect it produced was almost incredible ; in a moment, as if by 

 magic, every wasp was transformed from a listless, inanimate object, 

 into a being of animation, activity and energy^ work was at once 

 resolutely set about, and before the evening of the next day the combs 

 were completely enclosed. On the 28th the nest had become so 

 beautiful a specimen that I determined on preserving it in the state it 

 then was; I therefore summarily ejected the inmates, took it away, 

 and in its room supplied them with combs of the same number and 

 about the same size from a nest I took on the 24th. Around these 

 combs they immediately proceeded to construct a covering, which, in 

 the course of three days, they worked up to as great a degree of per- 

 fection as the former one, the two specimens being almost exactly 

 alike. 



On the 19th I took out another nest of V. germanica, on which were 

 groups of eggs of the same kinds as those previously noticed. The 

 covering was removed, the combs separated, and the whole of the in- 

 sects left behind. The combs were then strung on a wire and 

 suspended in the window of a room near a nest I had had at work 

 since the 11th of July, when numbers of workers from the latter 

 attached themselves to the newly-placed combs, feeding the larvae they 



