Untitled - The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

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NOTES OF A BOTANIST
account of an impertinent intruder on his dormitory
who was ignominiously tumbled down the ladder by
his house-wasps. They serve to keep down the
pest of large flies and cockroaches, and it is amus-
ing to watch them at work, both as butchers and as
builders.
On the Casiquiari, when we were one day hooking
along my piragoa against the rapid current, one
of the hooks caught a branch on which was a large
wasps' nest. The wasps
sallied out in thousands,
and the men threw down their hooks and leaped
into the river. I \vas at work in the cabin, and had
just time to throw myself flat on my face, when the
fierce little animals came buzzing in, and settled on
me in numbers, but not one of them stung me.
The boat drifted down the stream, and in a few
minutes all the wasps had left it, when the
men clambered on board and pulled across to the
opposite bank. Another day I had got on the top
of the cabin to gather the flowers of a tree over-
head, and the first thing I hooked down was a
wasps' nest, which I kicked into the river, and then
went on gathering my specimens battling all the
while with the wasps and getting severely stung-
for I saw the tree was new (it
qniarensis, n. sp. hb. 3196),
not to leave it ungathered.
Scorpions and centipedes
repulsive enough
is Hirtella Casi-
and was determined
are formidable and
to look at I have seen the latter
ii inches long- -but their sting or bite is rarely
fatal. When it is so, the last stage of suffering is
always lockjaw ; and it is the same in death from ant
and wasp stings.
I have been a few times stung
by scorpions, but only once badly, in a finger which