NA TURA L HIS TOR V NO TES 2 3 1 
hot for the flies, and that they resorted to these short flights, which had caused him 
such consternation, in order to cool their feet ! 
Sidmouth, November 6 , 1901. Will V. Vickers. 
From the answers, including one from myself, in your issue for November, it 
would be difficult to decide whether Mr. New saw gnats or ants. Allow me to 
plump for gnats. I had a convincing proof last year. On two trees from 20 to 
25 feet above my head, I watched what were unmistakably gnats swinging to 
leeward in the breeze. They were not ants or flies. A cloud of ants does not 
look at all like what Mr. New aptly describes as “ a short thin line of dark vapour 
which lay horizontal and pennant-like ” at the top of a tree, “in the direction 
away from the wind.” Ants have not sufficient powers of flight to assume such a 
formation or retain such a position. Their flight is feeble, like a shapeless cloud 
that soon scatters and disappears. They do not play about for hours in the same 
spot as gnats do. 
One still autumn day I noticed the ants, in twenty nests or so, swarming 
between p.m. and 4 p.m. on my lawn. They were flying aimlessly about in all 
directions to the great joy of the birds, but not in any formation such as Mr. New 
describes. At 5 p.m. the excitement in the nests and the air around was all over, 
and hardly a winged ant was to be seen. They had probably discarded their 
wings and returned to mother earth. 
Market Weston, Thetford. Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
November, 1901. 
House Fly. — Is anything really known about the history of the common 
house fly in its larval existence ? Sometimes we read and are told that its maggot 
feeds on offal or dung. Has any one seen these maggots and succeeded in rearing 
them ? I have my doubts. 
Market Weston, Thetford, Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
November, 1901. 
Wasps (p. 198). — “A Rugby .Selbornian” tells us he saw a fly get away 
from a wasp, apparently none the worse, after being stung three times. Wasps 
are great devourers of flies, and a struggle between a bluebottle and a wasp 
frequently ends in the fly’s escape. During the combat the wasp may attempt 
(generally unsuccessfully) to cripple the fly with its sting ; but it tries most of all 
to secure its victim by biting off a wing. In the case alluded to a doubt may 
arise as to whether the wasp drove its sting sufficiently far home to inject the 
poison. Were it to succeed in so doing I think the fly would succumb at once. 
Some of our British wasps feed their grubs on caterpillars or spiders, which 
they paralyse by stinging. .The poison does not cause death, but it destroys all 
power of escape, and probably would have this effect on a bluebottle. The 
honey bee kills off the drones by stinging them. A fly is not so easily pierced 
with a sting as a caterpillar or a spider, or a fat lazy drone. 
Market Weston, Thetford, Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
November, 1901. 
Wasps and Bluebottle Flies. — A “Rugby Selbornian” asks on p. 198 
if it is a common coincidence for a wasp to release a blow-fly after stinging it, 
I should say it is a rare occurrence for a fly to get away once in a wasp’s clutch ; 
for this reason butchers look on wasps as friends to some extent. Wasps rasp off 
bits of meat and carry to their nests. It is very interesting to get a colony of 
wasps in a glass case and suspend the nest, giving acce.ss of course, and watch the 
variety of food brought in. There is no disposition to sting one, if the nest is not 
disturbed or shaken. Wasps have been very numerous this season and very 
troublesome in houses, shops, &c. I was passing a confectioner's shop a short 
time ago and seeing what a trouble they were to the shopkeeper I closed the 
door and drove all into the windows and as they could not escape I set to and 
killed 360 by simply gripping them across the thorax with finger and thumb, and 
I was informed that 100 had been killed in the windows before I set about them 
and some hundreds the day before. I have come across nests of a species of 
wasp that I think is fresh, as the nests were built on banks above q-round in grass. 
They were quite yellow in the forehead or face. 
Ashivood Bank. j. Hiam. 
