NOTES ON A HORNET’S NEST. 
173 
queen was missing, and they did not appear to have sufficient 
interest in life to feed themselves or the brood in the cells, I 
decided to kill them for my collection, and six of them are 
exhibited with the nest this afternoon. 
It will be seen that the comb is about the size of half a cricket 
ball and the outer envelope has been commenced. There are 
70 cells or parts thereof—all workers’—each cell being one- 
third of an inch in diameter at the mouth, thus contrasting 
well with the worker-cells of wasps and honey-bees, which measure 
about one-fifth of an inch. All the cells in the central part of 
the comb contained grubs, some of which were well-grown, and 
as none of the cells had the appearance of having been capped' 
the existing workers had evidently removed the cappings and 
reduced the depth of the cells from which hornets had emerged 
to make room for fresh brood, none of the cells being deep enough 
to accommodate a fully developed pupa. As hornets take 
about 27 days to come to maturity, 10 of which are spent in the 
pupa stage, it seems that the queen in this case could not have 
been missing more than a week, as the youngest grubs appeared 
to be about two days old and the oldest about six. I must, 
however, confess that the history of the little nest is rather 
obscure, and I am not sufficiently acquainted with the life- 
history of the hornet to fathom the mystery. 
Peregrine Chasing a Heron.—An interesting recent 
addition to the Club’s collections at Stratford consists of an 
exhibition case, representing, in a pictorial setting, a wild 
Peregrine Falcon (a female, or “ Falcon ”), pursuing a Heron. The 
birds, which are beautifully preserved, were observed flying 
over the marshes by Dagenham Lake and shot some sixty years 
ago (in i860 or 1861), by Mr. James Gardner, senior, the 
well-known taxidermist of Oxford Street, and were set up by 
him ; the pictorial case, designed to represent the actual 
scene witnessed , was made for, and exhibited at, the Great 
Exhibition of 1862. Mr. Gardner’s grandson, Mr. J. J. Gardner, 
has now kindly presented these interesting Essex specimens 
to the Stratford Museum. 
Peregrines were formerly trained to fly at Herons in this 
country, two hawks (a “ cast ”), being invariably used in the 
attack, out of deference to the Heron’s long powerful bill, which 
is said sometimes to have won the victory for the quarry by trans¬ 
fixing the attacking hawk ; but this sport has been discontinued 
for nearly a century past. Percy Thompson. 
