biographer of the late Sir Thomas Brisbane, has assured me that the practical result of destroying all the wasps on Sir T. Brisbane's estate was, that in two years' time the place was infested, like Egypt, with a plague of flies. At every wasp's nest you might have gathered a handful of the wings of insects; and the flies throve apace when the wasps were killed.

*

We do not readily appreciate the indirect benefits which we derive from the labours of wasps, just as we are not perhaps properly grateful to beasts of prey for their equally unsolicited assistance. Cats, and weasels, and foxes, though they are not good to eat, are often much more acceptable neighbours to the farmer than rabbits. And the colonist, brought into contact with nature in her wilder forms, knows well how the larger beasts of prey serve him by keeping in check the animals of which he more immediately and consciously makes use, but which very animals, without these restrictions, might prove more injurious to him than beasts of prey ever do.

As Man takes possession of the soil, the beasts of prey retire before him, and we, in a certain sense, undertake their duties. The duties of insects, however, are not so obvious, nor so easily within our power to fulfil. We scarcely know what we owe to them so long as they confine themselves to the fertilization of flowers, to destroying decaying organic matter, or to keeping each other's numbers within due bounds. It is when they exceed these limits, when they hurt

* I acknowledge with great pleasure Mr. Bryson's kind communication in further explanation of his letter in 'The Times,' On behalf of wood-pigeons and sparrows, December 17, or later, 1864.

us or damage our property, that we first become. aware of their existence, and that we feel their importance. And then we call in the aid of the birds to destroy for us enemies against which we are ourselves almost powerless; or of Science to teach us to destroy the nidus in which the pest is propagated.

The most enthusiastic advocate of the principle of non-interference, of the rule of live and let live, would hardly demur to the occasional intervention of Man, for whose use all these creatures were designed, as a natural part of the general balance of power among animals. It is only a small part, however, as concerns insects. And as the dictates of philosophers are not always right, and the wants and whims of man and woman-kind, which more often determine which of the smaller animals shall be spared, and which doomed to destruction, are still more fallible, it is a comfort to think that man's power in this respect is so limited, and that his decision is not final. Otherwise, the subjects of this work would long since have shared the fate of the dodo and the moa.

WASPS constitute a subdivision of the large Order of Hymenopterous Insects. This order is characterized by the possession of two pair of clear membranous wings, from which it takes its name, and of a peculiar instrument placed at the end of the abdomen in the female sex. This instrument has been adopted as a means of classification, the Order being subdivided into tribes according to the different structure and functions of their appendage. In the Sirex and Saw-flies it is a piercer or saw. In the Gall-flies and Ichneumons it is an apparatus of pointed bristles. In the Ruby-wasps it is a telescopic tube. And in the four remaining tribes, which are hence called the Aculeate Hymenoptera, namely, Ants, Bees, Wasps, and Sand-wasps, it is a sting.

There is no difficulty in distinguishing wasps from the tribes first mentioned, nor, in most cases from ants. And the British species of wasps, at least, with which we are here alone concerned, can scarcely be confused with any of our bees or sand-wasps. It will be needless, therefore, to enter into a detailed

description of all their differential characters; it will be sufficient to indicate them generally, as displayed in the typical species.

Bees then have a long strap-shaped tongue or proboscis; the hind legs are flattened out and hairy, and the basal joint of the feet, that is to say the one nearest the body, is very much larger than any of the others. The fore-wings are marked in a way peculiar to bees, and are not folded in repose. The tribe of Sand-wasps in the same way have peculiar markings on their fore-wings, and do not fold them in repose. Their tibiæ, that is to say the long bones next above the tarsi, are armed all down with strong spines, and are very much stouter in proportion than the corresponding limbs of the wasp.

The Wasp tribe are provided with stings: their tarsal joints, unlike those of bees, are of a regularly proportional size, and their tibiæ, unlike those of sand-wasps, are long and slight, and armed with spines only at the distal extremity. The fore-wings are marked with undeviating regularity by certain nervures differing in the several families, and when in repose are folded longitudinally. By this single character of the longitudinal folding of the wings the Eumenidæ or solitary wasps, and the Vespidæ or social wasps, are somewhat arbitrarily, as it might seem, and artificially, united into one family, hence called Diplopteryga. By this rule the Eumenidæ are separated from the Fossores or sand-wasps-which do not fold their wings-to which they seem much more naturally allied. The distinction, however, appears much less arbitrary in the Exotic than in the British Fauna. In our islands, indeed, the transition from the

social to the solitary group is very abrupt. And the two species which represent the solitary group seem forced into an unnatural position, when united with the typical genus Vespa of the social group, to the neglect of their more obvious relationships. But in the Exotic Fauna, where all the connecting links are supplied, this objection disappears. The Vespidæ shade into the Eumenidæ by as gradual steps as these do into the Fossores, clinging by their anatomy to the former, by their habits to the latter division. And, since some artificial distinction must be adopted, perhaps that which the folding of the front wings supplies is as little arbitrary as any other.

The EUMENIDÆ, or solitary group, are very widely distributed over the surface of the globe. Perhaps they are less variously represented in Great Britain than in most other places; for we have only one very local species, Eumenes coarctata, and twelve varieties of Odynerus, or of kindred species not readily distinguishable from it. The natural history of the solitary wasps does not come within the proper scope of these remarks, so I will not enter upon it at length, but only give a short sketch, as far as they have come casually under my observation, of the appearance and habits of the Odyneri, which, to most of us, typify the British Eumenida.

They are small, dark-looking wasps, having the abdomen banded with black and yellow in the strongest contrast, the black generally predominating. The abdomen is spindle-shaped, tapering off at each end. The head is broad and flattened, the compound eyes large and projecting. The mandibles are long