with raw hides entered the harbour, and numbers of the Polistes were imported. A lady, whose house had windows at the back facing the harbour, took several in her bedroom and sent them to me. The captain of the vessel said that when they left Rio the flies swarmed on deck, and many accompanied the vessel throughout the voyage." Mr. Smith considers the Ince Blundell specimen to be Polistes binotatus of De Saussure, a native of Brazil, which does not appear to have previously been taken in England. The social wasps of Britain have been figured and described in a work, not half so well known as it deserves to be, by Dr. Ormerod, published in 1868 by Longmans & Co. There are only seven species, of which the largest is the hornet, an insect generally regarded with fear and aversion, but capable of being domesticated and utilised as a household pet see a paper in the German Entomological Magazine, by Pastor Muller, 1817. The following brief account, mainly from Dr. Ormerod's book, refers to the common wasp, Vespa vulgaris. The large wasps we see during the first warm days in spring are females, or mother wasps, which have passed the winter in concealment. What with late frosts, rains, birds, and little boys, comparatively few of the wasps which have lived through the winter survive to become the founders of colonies. When at last the wanderings of the future queen have come to an end, and she has discovered a hole or a branch to suit her taste, she enters on the work of her life. The first rudiments of the nest that is to be appear in the form of a little grey cap, suspended by the button at the top from a root or branch. Within the cap, with their openings downwards, are constructed four shallow cells, in each of which an egg is firmly glued. These cells are deepened as the enclosed eggs are hatched, an event attended with the earliest perils of wasp-life, the peril of dropping out of their cradles. Some perish in this way, notwithstanding the admirable prehensile appliances with which the larva is furnished, consisting of the future mandibles at one end and a kind of disc at the other. The first perfect insects that appear are workers, which, as in the bees, are females not fully developed. By this time the queen has lost her power of making building-paper, her supply of saliva being exhausted, or rather diverted, and henceforth her duties are maternal, whilst the workers extend the nest from a little fairy ball, which might be hid in an egg-cup, to a great paper city. The loss of a queen amongst the wasps is not attended by the confusion which prevails when a similar calamity befals a community of bees. The workers continue to build; they even lay eggs, but the eggs laid by workers produce only male wasps or drones, and the swarm gradually dies away. Towards the close of summer the eggs laid by the queen produce drones and females; the latter do no work in constructing the nest, which they seldom leave except for short distances to bask in the sunshine. They are carefully fed by the workers with the best of the food brought home, and by the time that the wasp community finally breaks up they are in a condition resembling that of the bears before they take up winter quarters. Every available space within the bodies of these future mother wasps is stored with masses of fat for consumption during the long winter retreat. Whilst I read these notes they are quietly sleeping, tens of thousands of them, it is hard to say where; but in March or April next they will make their appearance and enter upon the duties of providing for a succeeding generation. The drones may be known by their much larger antennæ. No male insect has a sting. Wasp paper is made of vegetable fibres, masticated by the powerful jaws or mandibles of the insect. These jaws open transversely, not longitudinally, as ours do. The researches of Dr. Landois have established the fact that the hum of insects is not produced by the organs of flight. On the abdomen and on the thorax may be observed little apertures called spiracles; these are respiratory openings, and with them are connected the trachea, or air tubes. The proper instrument of voice answering to our vocal chords, or nearly so, is a little horny comb, which is placed across the spiracle, and vibrates like the tongue of a Jew's harp or accordion with the passing current of air. This explains what I have often heard from a bee, a shrill hum when the wings have been confined. The wings modify, but do not produce the hum. For further information on the life history of the social wasps, I may refer to a beautiful work by the Rev. J. G. Wood, Homes without Hands, the best of all his numerous works; and to the still more recent, and, as indicating a patient, loving search after truth, more wondrous investigations accomplished by Sir John Lubbock, which appeared first in Nature, and afterwards in his work on Insect Life." 66 SECOND ORDINARY MEETING. ROYAL INSTITUTION, November 1st, 1875. J. A. PICTON, F.S.A., PRESIDENT, in the Chair. Ladies were present at this Meeting. Messrs. W. H. Picton, Stevenson, Edmunds, Wilson, Prytherch, M.D., Doyle, and Lutschaunig were elected ordinary members. Dr. CAMPBELL BROWN exhibited the magneto-electric machine, constructed on M. Gramme's principle, and illustrated its powers by several experiments. Dr. CARTER exhibited a growing specimen of the Eucalyptus, and also a jalap plant, brought from the Botanic Gardens. Dr. NEVINS exhibited a living specimen, recently born, of the snapping turtle. The PRESIDENT read the following communication: I wish to communicate to the Society an episode, in the literary history of Liverpool, which may not be without its interest. The publication of Mr. Curtis's mock heroic Latin poem of "Via Audax," giving a description of Bold Street, brought to my memory a jeu d'esprit of a similar character, published in 1820, in the Kaleidoscope, a local weekly literary journal, edited by Mr. Egerton Smith, of the Liverpool Mercury. It was entitled "Liverpool, an Heroic Poem, in Six Cantos," only four of which, however, saw the light. The style and metre were those of Lord Byron's Beppo and Don Juan, mingling "The grave and gay, the lively and severe." The poem exhibited decided talent, and attracted much attention, which was increased by the mystery and oddity by which its issue was surrounded. I will quote a verse style, which will also or two at random, to illustrate the show the enormous changes in the aspect and customs of the town which fifty-five years have brought about. He is describing Lord Street, which was then exceedingly narrow. "Thy beauties, Lord Street, next attract the eye (The Corporation should have made thee wider); 66 Here you may see, with slow and measured march, Yet think themselves, good souls, the very thing; From humble' would be' up to 'comme il faut."" In this strain he perambulates the streets, taking note of whatever is noteworthy, occasionally interspersing his comic with a vein of sentiment, e.g. "Oh, woman, woman! loveliest, dearest, best, Oh, born our hearts' wild sallies to command! From all the cold world's wrongs; thy gentle hand Can press against the pallid brow of care, And warm to life and love the tide that lingers there." The author preserved his incognito notwithstanding Mr. Smith's earnest endeavours to penetrate the secret. He was evidently an Irishman, from the wild recklessness of his rhymes and the allusions in the text. He entitled himself, Shaughnessy O'Shaughnessy, Esq., of the County of Tipperary. After two cantos had appeared, a letter was received from Dermot O'Goster, Lieut. in the 88th Infantry, informing the editor that the lamented Mr. O'Shaughnessy, after partaking too freely at the Star and Garter, then a fashionable Hotel in Paradise Street, had walked into the Old Dock, and so terminated his poetical career. A communication was subsequently made that the ghost of the deceased poet had appeared in a whiskey barrel, and supplied the missing |