NOTES ON A HORNET'S NEST. 173
queen was missing, and they did not appear to have sufficient
interest in life to feed themselves or the brood in the cells, I
decided to kill them for my collection, and six of them are
exhibited with the nest this afternoon.
It will be seen that the comb is about the size of half a cricket
ball and the outer envelope has been commenced. There are
70 cells or parts thereof—all workers'—each cell being one-
third of an inch in diameter at the mouth, thus contrasting
well with the worker-cells of wasps and honey-bees, which measure
about one-fifth of an inch. All the cells in the central part of
the comb contained grubs, some of which were well-grown, and
as none of the cells had the appearance of having been capped'
the existing workers had evidently removed the cappings and
reduced the depth of the cells from which hornets had emerged
to make room for fresh brood, none of the cells being deep enough
to accommodate a fully developed pupa. As hornets take
about 27 days to come to maturity, 10 of which are spent in the
pupa stage, it seems that the. queen in this case could not have
been missing more than a week, as the youngest grubs appeared
to be about two days old and the oldest about six. I must,
however, confess that the history of the little nest is rather
obscure, and I am not sufficiently acquainted with the life-
history of the hornet to fathom the mystery.
Peregrine Chasing a Heron.—An interesting recent
addition to the Club's collections at Stratford consists of an
exhibition case, representing, in a pictorial setting, a wild
Peregrine Falcon (a female, or "Falcon"), pursuing a Heron. The
birds, which are beautifully preserved, were observed flying
over the marshes by Dagenham Lake and shot some sixty years
ago (in 1860 or 1861), by Mr. James Gardner, senior, the
well-known taxidermist of Oxford Street, and were set up by
him; the pictorial case, designed to represent the actual
scene witnessed, was made for, and exhibited at, the Great
Exhibition of 1862. Mr. Gardner's grandson, Mr. J. J. Gardner,
has now kindly presented these interesting Essex specimens
to the Stratford Museum.
Peregrines were formerly trained to fly at Herons in this
country, two hawks (a "cast"), being invariably used in the
attack, out of deference to the Heron's long powerful bill, which
is said sometimes to have won the victory for the quarry by trans-
fixing the attacking hawk; but this sport has been discontinued
for nearly a century past. Percy Thompson,