"Both nests were constructed of earth tempered with water, and I could trace no sign of gluten of any kind in them. In the nest prepared by me were seven ranges of cells, and at the time of taking it from 400 to 500 hornets were at home. Although I took out every perfect insect, there were from 40 to 50 nearly hatched by 5 A.M. next morning, showing with what enormous rapidity they increase. The nest was placed under a large wire dish cover, and a nest of the yellow ant before referred to was placed with them, so that every young hornet was destroyed as soon as born." July 1st, 1864.-"Benares. As a boy, when in England, I have seen a hornet carry off a fly sitting on a door handle, and to-day I saw one pounce on a small honey bee deep in the pollen of a flower, and taking him off, sit down and eat him quietly, and from the number hovering about flowers, this would seem to be a favourite food." July 19th, 1864.-"Benares. Watched hornets catching and eating the workers of termites, whose galleries I had just destroyed on the bark of a tree, when, in consequence, the blind insects were running wildly about." Saw August 19th, 1864.--"Watched them more narrowly and carefully. that one caught at least ten termites, one after the other, and made them all up into a ball with its jaws, when the said ball was taken away, evidently to feed the young larvæ with a rich and juicy morsel, which, however, would be strongly tinctured with acid." APPENDIX. SYNOPSIS OF SPECIES OF Vespida IN THE NATIONAL COLLECTION. The accompanying table is a synopsis of most, if not all, of the species of Vespide in the national collection. There are, of course, many more genera of aculeate Hymenoptera represented there, but the following represent the true Vespide occurring both in the old and new world, but the larger proportion of species, especially as regards the hornets, would appear to be met with in the former. The distinction in colour and in size between so-called "hornets" and "wasps" would appear to hold good not only in England, but in most countries of the world wherever these insects occur. Some of the species of Vespida in the collection at the British Museum are still unnamed, and several specimens are overcrowded, the great number of those of Vespa orientalis having caused them to become mixed with those of Vespa crabro. I have been unable to discover that Vespa crabro occurs in Bible lands, or indeed in any part of Asia or Africa, though it is recorded in a catalogue of American Hymenoptera, and two specimens in the British Museum are labelled "New York." Also three unnamed species of wasps from N. India and Persia (13, 14, 15). One or more of these may be the same as the named European kinds. Also two unnamed species from Mexico, and two from British Columbia, one from Hudson's Bay, one from U. States (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15). ORDINARY MEETING.* THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES, ESQ., LL.D., IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the last Meeting were read and confirmed. The following elections took place :— LIFE MEMBER :-Colonel A. W. C. Bell, India Staff Corps. The following paper was then read by the Secretary in the absence of the Author :: TIME DIVISIONS OF THE ICE AGE. By WARREN UPHAM, Esq., M.A., F.G.S.A., Secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minn. Na former paper, on the "Causes of the Ice Age," published in the Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute (vol. xxix, 1897, pp. 201-223), my concluding words stated my belief that the Ice age was "essentially continuous and single, with important fluctuations, but not of epochal significance, both during its advance and decline." This view is consistent with recognition and emphasis of its time divisions, indicated by oscillations of the boundaries of glaciation and by diverse conditions of drift deposition; but these divisions seem to me to merit designation as stages, rather than as epochs, of geologic time. Numerous and well marked stages of the Glacial period have been distinguished, and may be correlated in the same succession, being therefore in all probability of nearly contemporaneous duration, in North America and Europe. American glacialists have found it convenient to give to the comparatively short closing part of the Ice age a dis * 15th April, 1901. tinctive name, "the Champlain epoch," referring to the occurrence of fossiliferous marine beds overlying the glacial drift in the basin of Lake Champlain. It was the time of land depression from the high epeirogenic uplift that had caused the snow and ice accumulation. Thereby a temperate climate, warm in the summers, was restored on the borders of the ice-sheet, which retreated rapidly, though waveringly. More vigorous glacial currents were then produced by the marginal melting and increased steepness of the ice-front, favouring the formation of many retreatal moraines of very hummocky and boulder-bearing drift. The continuous Glacial period or Ice age may be therefore regarded as divisible into two chief parts or stages, which were of quite unequal length, the first being probably at least ten times as long as the second. The first or Glacial stage was marked by high elevation of the drift-bearing areas, alike in America and Europe, and by their envelopment beneath vast ice-sheets, which varied much in their extent during successive long periods of alternating advance and recession. The second or Champlain stage was distinguished by the subsidence of these areas and the departure of the ice with abundant deposition of both glacial and modified drift. Epeirogenic movements, first of great uplift and later of depression, were thus the basis of the chief time divisions of this period. One was the time mainly characterized by the extension and culmination of glaciation; the other included its wavering decline and end. Each of these periods, as they may be named (although merely noting the general growth and general wane of the ice-sheets) was divided into stages, marked in the glacial epoch by fluctuations of the predominant ice accumulation, and in the Champlain period by successively diminishing limits of glaciation, by retreatal moraines, and by glacial lakes temporarily held in basins that sloped toward the departing ice. Exploration of the European glacial drift by two Americans, Professor H. Carvill Lewis in the British Isles and Professor R. D. Salisbury in Germany, laid the foundations for determining the geologic equivalency of the successive parts of the North American and European drift series. Salisbury especially noted that the marginal moraines of northern Germany lie, as in the United States, at some distance back from the limits of the drift. Studies by many observers have shown that on both continents the border of the drift along the greater part |