THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 95 
cocoons, and found that the grubs were still in the larval form. 
I also found two small sized Thynnid larvae free in the soil, 
but so far I am unable to say whether these had been attached 
to a grub or whether they had crawled out of a damaged one. 
In the last week in September I saw quite a number of the 
medium sized brown Thynnids of the male sex flying about 
amongst the orange blossom, but I could only see an occasional 
female. This continued till the end of the first week in October. 
On the 10th of October I noticed the wingless females crawling 
up a paling fence in Epping. I secured about a dozen of these 
without seeing a male. On my way home, about 50 yards from 
where I had been catching the females, I had to pass a black- 
berry hedge. Here I found a cluster of male Thynnids hang- 
ing four or five thick like a swarm of bees. On strolling down 
the hedge I found another large colony and several smaller. 
ones. At the two largest colonies I disturbed a few to enable 
me to form an idea as to the number of wasps there were in 
each colony. At the very least I estimated the two large ones 
to contain 1,500 each, and in the whole, I consider that 4,000 
would be a small estimate of the number of wasps, within 30 
yards of each other. Choosing one of the smaller clusters, which 
were hanging on a honeysuckle vine, I swept my net up under 
it, and secured over 500 in the one sweep. A part of these I 
am exhibiting to-night, the remainder T liberated. T visited the 
locality the following morning soon after sunrise to make 
further observations. They were all there. JI stopped in the 
locality for about an hour, and caught 6 more females off the 
fence. When I left at about 8 o’clock the clusters were still 
intact. About an hour later, as I was passing, I noticed they 
were scattering freely. At 1 p.m. there was only a few -scat- 
tered ones in the locality, but at 5.30 p.m. they were all there 
in their clusters again. This they did for 4 nights, and then 
they began. to disappear gradually, and within a week they had 
all dispersed. Probably the females found crawling up the 
fence had been dropped by the males during the day. 
Though I took about 30 around this locality, I only found 
two pairs in cop. All those on the fence appeared to have 
lost their charm for the males, but where I found a few 
amongst the leaves the males were in evidence. 
I submitted several of the males found in the clusters to 
Mr. W. W. Froggatt, and he identified them as Thynnoides 
pugionatus. 
