about midday
There was one victim , a grocer , who discovered one of these monsters in a sugar-cask and very rashly attacked it with a spade as it rose . He struck it to the ground for a moment , and it stung him through the boot as he struck at it again and cut its body in half . He was first dead of the two ... . The most dramatic of the fifty appearances was certainly that of the wasp that visited the British Museum about midday , dropping out of the blue serene upon one of the innumerable pigeons that feed in the courtyard of that building , and flying up to the cornice to devour its victim at leisure . After that it crawled for a time over the museum roof , entered the dome of the reading-room by a skylight , buzzed about inside it for some little time -- there was a stampede among the readers -- and at last found another window and vanished again with a sudden silence from human observation . Most of the other reports were of mere passings or descents . A picnic party was dispersed at Aldington Knoll and all its sweets and jam consumed , and a puppy was killed and torn to pieces near Whitstable under the very eyes of its mistress ... .