Abstract
THE question of your correspondent “F. N.” in your last number (p. 385), inquiring whether the incident observed by him is an unusual occurrence or not, is one that has been so frequently asked that it is somewhat curious that the fact has not become recognised generally as constituting a regular habit of the insect. Four years ago several letters upon this subject were communicated to NATURE (vide vol. xxi. pp. 417, 494, 538, 563, and vol. xxii. p. 31), and many other notices of the practice might be quoted. Darwin related having observed a wasp seize and carry off a fly too large for convenient transport, which returned to the ground to cut off the wings to lighten its weight, and then flew away with it. During the hot months, butchers' shops, as I have frequently noticed, are much resorted to by wasps as a hunting-ground, and although they are also fond of the juice of dead meat, they are encouraged rather than destroyed, in consequence of the benefit they confer by their habit of preying upon “blow-flies,” as I have more than once been told by the shopkeepers themselves.
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WHITE, W. Carnivorous Wasps. Nature 30, 408 (1884). https://doi.org/10.1038/030408b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/030408b0
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