Chapter V

Chapter VCRABROTHE highest point of the island is crowned by a great group of linden trees; and one day their perfume, carried by the wind far over field and wood, was calling everything that had wings to gather the richest of all the gifts that July can offer. We, too, were drawn to the spot, and found the great blossoming domes thrilling and vibrating with life. For miles around, the bees, wasps, and butterflies had gathered to the feast; and we seemed to touch the high-tide of the year in the scent of the flowers, the humming throng of happy creatures, and the vision of it all against the summer sky.Below, in a great root that had pushed above ground, five little wasps, by name sexmaculatus, of the worthy but unimaginative genus Crabro, resisting the intoxication of the linden flowers, were sawing and cutting in the most humdrum and practical manner. One of them, presumably the earliest riser, was well down in the root, and came backing up once in a while, pushinga lot of wood dust out of the hole. This was spread out by means of legs and mandibles, and was then blown away by the fanning wings of the little worker, who circled about just above the ground until the last grain had disappeared. Here was another way of protecting the home. The fresh dust might attract the attention of some cuckoo-like insect who would lay her egg within; and therefore it was dispersed, just as Ammophila carried out her pellet and flung it to a distance, and Sphex spread evenly over the ground the mass of earth that she carried from her hole.After this series of actions had been repeated several times the wasp flew away to hunt. We afterward found that she had finished the third in a set of cells leading from a main gallery. On her return we delayed her to see what she was carrying. She showed no fear, but alighted close by, and while she was trying to transfer to the third pair of legs the fly that she was clasping with the second pair, it escaped and flew gayly away. Flies are plenty, however, and she soon had another which she was permitted to store; and from that time she worked busily until we left her at noon. It took her from two to ten minutes to catch her fly, and at each return two or three minutes were spent in the nest. On opening her tunnel some days later, we found within not only flies, but long-bodied gnats, and all of them seemed to have been brought home uninjured. When the freshest cell was opened some flew away, others were walking about, and all were lively. The wasp egg was laid on the under side of the neck; and although we could not be certain of the exact time of laying we thought it hatched at the end of thirty-six hours. From ten to sixteen flies were provided for each larva.ill99SEXMACULATUS IN THE LINDEN ROOTSA month later we found Crabro lentus nesting in the ground. Her tunnel ran down obliquely for six and one half centimeters, and had an enlargement at the end. Two bugs and a fly were in the nest, when we opened it before the provision was completed. To find sexmaculatus taking both flies and gnats was surprising, so rigid are the family traditions of the wasps; still, she might feel that so long as she drew the line at Diptera she was all right. But to believe that one wasp, a Crabro, too, with all the marks of conservatism about her, would take such diverse things as bugs and flies, is almost too much to believe. It is true that Crabro wesmæli is said to use both flies and bugs;[4]but some accident may have led to this supposition, and stronger evidence is needed to prove that there is variability in so deeply seated an instinct.ill103CRABRO AND HER WHITE MOTHS.The Crabro wasps all have pleasant ideas as to where they want to live, but interruptus excels in the choice of a dwelling place. We lately found ten or twelve of them in Milwaukee, nesting in an old log on the shore of Lake Michigan, and when they opened their doors in the morning they had before them the splendor of the great bay; but calm in the midst of the glory they never paused on the threshold, as Cerceris would have done, to take a look at the world before going to work. One morning the earliest riser in our little colony was beginning the day at half past nine. Of good size for a Crabro, with a square determined-looking head and very direct and business-like manners, she proceeded to cut out a new chamber for provisioning. These chambers are nothing more than enlargements of the long gallery, such as are made in stems by related species. At ten o’clock she departed on a hunting excursion among the bushes on the bank above us, and came back in eight minutes, carrying, much to our surprise, a white-winged moth, which was clasped under the body by the second and third pairs of legs, and was passed back to the third pair as she alighted before entering. A moth is an innovation, a delicacy new to the accepted idea of what a Crabro larder, accustomed to Diptera, should contain. A moment later she was off again, but this time did not succeed so quickly, coming back twice empty-handed for brief visits, and bringing in a load at the end of half an hour. It took six moths to provision the cell, and as the number neared completion her interest and energy seemed to wax greater, the hunting intervals shortening to five, and even to two minutes. We found afterwards that some of the moths were alive and some dead, and that she packed them lengthwise, one after another, into the closely fitting chamber. At a little before eleven o’clock the cell was filled, and the wasp retired from sight, closing the door behind her. We thought that she was resting, but presently the protrusion of wood dust showed that she was enlarging her house, and an hour later she came out and began to hunt again. By this time half a dozen were working. Before leaving for the first time in the morning each one made a thorough study of the place, and on returning they entered their own doors, which were standing open, without hesitation, the long white wings of the moths trailing behind them. Four species were represented in the nests that we opened.ill106CRABRO STIRPICOLAMany species of Crabro make their nests in the stems of plants, and among these is stirpicola, which is seen in numbers, through the middle of July, flying about in a leisurely way, though it is only toward the end of the month, or in the early days of August, that they settle down to the work of making their homes. On the afternoon of July twenty-seventh, after some very lively work in the heat of the day, we walked down to the berry garden at half past five o’clock, rather to rest ourselves than with the thought of undertaking anything new; but a wasp-hunter cannot afford to choose his own hours, and we thankfully accepted the sending of fortune when we came upon a stirpicola busy at work in digging out her nest. She had only begun to excavate, and had reached a length just equal to that of her own body. Her manners were an agreeable contrast to those of the wasps that we had been watching through the day. The feverish excitement of their ways seemed quite in keeping with the burning heat of noon, while Crabro’s slow and gentle movements harmonized perfectly with the long shadows of evening. To fully appreciate the difference between Pompilus or Ammophila and Crabro it is necessary to see them at work. The one is the embodiment of all that is restless, vying with the humming-birds in swiftness and energy, whilethe other is calm, quiet, and stately in all that she does.ill-107BOTTLE ON STEM TO MEASURE WORK OF CRABROSome ten feet away was a second stirpicola, and this one, to judge from the depth to which she had penetrated, must have been at work for about two hours. We watched them both, and saw them bring up load after load of pith. They bit out the pellets with their mandibles, and passed them back between the legs and under the body until a quantity had accumulated above the tip of the abdomen. They then walked backward up the stem, and thus pushed out the mass as they came to the top. Often they used the hind legs to assist in getting it out of the way, sometimes kicking it to a little distance. Once in every two or three trips they would come out far enough to expose part of the thorax. They appeared and disappeared with the regularity of a machine, never stopping to rest.We remained with them until seven o’clock, when we placed a long bottle over each stem in such a way that while it did not interfere with the work of the wasp, it caught the chips of pith as theyfell out. At the end of an hour we noted the amount of accumulation in the tube, and thus had a measure of their rate of work. The drawing gives an idea of the arrangement of the tube on the stem. When we left them they were still digging and delving.At half past nine we took a lantern and went down to visit our charges. We expected to find them at rest, and asleep; but on the contrary they were working as busily as ever, and upon examining the measuring glasses we found that they had not paused since we left them. We measured the depth of the débris in the bottles, and then emptied them.At four o’clock on the next morning we went to the garden, and were much surprised to find that the two wasps had worked without intermission throughout the night. Indeed they seemed to have shortened a little the time that it took to make a round trip down the gallery and up to the opening again, since there was more pith in the bottles than we could have expected if they had worked at only their former rate. Neither the coolness of the air nor the darkness of the night had made the slightest difference to them. After watching them a few minutes, and marveling at their powers of endurance, we cleared out the tubes and returned to bed. At half past eight we found them stillat work. Unlike us, they had taken no morning nap, but had gone on with their tunneling in their usual steady way.From this time their ways diverged, and they must be described separately. At nine o’clock the one that we had first seen came up to the opening, walking head first, and flew off, remaining away seven minutes. When she returned she at once resumed her work, and kept at it without a pause until two in the afternoon. At this hour she went away, and we never saw her again. We suppose that she was killed, for it seems improbable that so faithful a creature could have deserted her half-finished home. Pompilus quinquenotatus often deserted a partly finished nest for some more enticing spot, and Sphex started several excavations before making a final choice; but we cannot believe that there was anything fickle about Crabro.The second wasp came up head first to the entrance of her hole at two minutes after nine, as though she had been influenced, in some subtle way, by her neighbor’s example; but after looking about for a moment she went back. She repeated this observation several times, and finally, at twenty-five minutes after nine, came out and flew to a leaf near by. Then she circled around, alighting a number of times, and at lastdeparted. Her stay was brief, for at just thirty-five minutes after nine she returned, and at once settled down to her work.We now began to make notes as to the length of time that it took her to go down and bring back her load. We timed her again and again, and found that she was remarkably regular, each of her trips occupying from forty-five to fifty seconds.All that day we kept her under strict surveillance, and never once did she suspend her operations either for rest or refreshment. Late in the afternoon, while we sat watching her as she appeared and disappeared with almost the regularity of clockwork, we found it difficult to realize that the patient little creature had been at work for more than twenty-four hours, with only one brief intermission. Without hurry or flurry she kept at her task, reminding us, in her business-like ways, of the social wasps of the genus Vespa. When we left her, at dusk, we attached the recording tube to the stem, and at ten o’clock in the evening we found that she had not stopped working. We emptied the glass, and left her.At seven o’clock in the morning of July twenty-ninth we paid her a visit, and could scarcely believe the testimony of our senses when we saw that the record was oneof unceasing toil through the long hours of the second night. We began to wonder if she would ever finish her task. Wonderful though she was, we had grown a little weary of our long session of watching. We had been glad that she worked through the first night; it was creditable to her and interesting to us, and we admired her even more for sticking to it through the second, but when it looked as though we might have to remain by her side through another long day, watching an endless series of loads as they were carried out, we confess that we thought she was rather overdoing it. Gradually, however, she slowed up her work, taking two or three minutes to make a journey down and up. At last, at just nine o’clock, her head appeared at the top of the stalk, and after a slight hesitation she flew away. The nest was completed.We have studied wasps for a number of years, and we feel that we are on terms of more or less intimacy with many of the species, but never before have we known one to work after day was done. We have often gone out with a lantern at bedtime for a tour of inspection among our nests, and have always found the inhabitants quiet and presumably asleep. The social wasps are very industrious, but during the hot nights of July they are to be seen clustered together on the outside of their papernests in deep repose; and although the Vespa wasps that nest in the ground sometimes come home late in the twilight, we have never seen them work after it was really dark. Polistes fusca may be said to share our cottage, so thickly does she hang her combs under the shelter of our porches, and from observations taken at all hours we know that she is quiet through the night. Sir John Lubbock, in “Ants, Bees, and Wasps,” speaks of the great industry of wasps. He has known them to work from early morning until dusk without any interval for rest or refreshment; but here was our little Crabro toiling from three in the afternoon of July twenty-seventh, through that night and the day and night following until nine o’clock on the morning of the twenty-ninth,—a period of forty-two consecutive hours with one intermission of ten minutes on the morning of the twenty-eighth. Surely she takes the palm for industry, not only from other wasps, but from the ant and the bee as well.ill113NEST OF C. STIRPICOLAThe nest was completed, but the work of storing it remained to be done. The wasp flew away at nine o’clock, and ten minutes later came back with something, we knew not what, for she dropped into her hole so quickly that she was out of sight almost before we knew she was there. Two minutes later she came up, and was off again. This time she was gone twelve minutes, and when she returned we were again baffled in our effort to see what she was carrying. When she came out she alighted upon a leaf and attended to her toilet, cleaning both body and wings by rubbing them off with her hind legs, and from this time on she never started on a hunting expedition without paying this attention to her personal appearance. On her third trip she was gone twenty minutes, coming back with a small fly; and before we left her at ten o’clock, she had stored six more. When we came back at half past two in the afternoon she was working, and she kept up her goings and comings until four o’clock, when she suspended operations for the day. On the next morning we were called away, and know nothing of what she did, but on the following day, Thursday, we resumed our observations. She worked hard all the morning, but in the afternoon her trips were few, and were made at long intervals. On Friday she worked from eight to nine, when she departed, and never returned. Wewatched for her, at intervals, all through that day and the next, when we were forced to conclude that our faithful little worker had fallen a victim to some bird or beast. We did not disturb the nest until four days later, when we cut the stalk, and examined it.We found that the tunnel was thirty-nine centimeters in length. This was a long distance for her to excavate, and, all things considered, her progress had been rapid. We have opened a number of stems that had been stored by this species, and all the excavations were from thirty to forty centimeters in length, the width of the gallery being about three and one half millimeters, while on each side there was from one to one and one half millimeters of pith that had not been cut away. Of course these points varied with the diameter of the stem and also with the size of the worker.Our little stirpicola had stored one cell, had laid an egg, and had built a partition of pith across the stem as a floor to the second cell, before her untimely taking off. Had she lived, ten or twelve cells would have been stored, one above the other. The completed cell contained a larva and parts of eighteen flies of different sizes, four species being represented. The flies had all been attacked by the larva, the abdomens of some and the thoraces of others having been eaten. The larva continued to eat for two days, and then spun its cocoon. The flies found in this and in other nests of stirpicola were all dead. All the pupæ that we kept wintered in the cocoon and came out in the spring.ill115AMMOPHILA SLEEPING IN THE GRASS (AFTER BANKS).The females of Crabro, like those of other genera, seem to use their galleries as sleeping places, but the males stop at any convenient inn. We once entertained one of them for several nights in a hole in one of the posts of our cottage porch. Other males, as in Philanthus, spend time and care in digging a hole in the ground, to which they return night after night. In Agenia the female keeps one cell ahead of her needs, and tucks herself away in it very comfortably; but the Pelopæi, instead of making this use of their tubes, congregate in the evening where there are convenient crevices, and make as much fuss about getting settled as a lot of English sparrows. Mr. Banks has made a delightfully pretty as well as interesting observation on the sleeping habits of Ammophila. In a corner of his garden where the grass grew long, dozens of these wasps arrived every evening, and after a good many changes in position, fell sound asleep, clinging to the stems about one third of the way down. They registered at this hotel between seven and eight o’clock, and departed before five in the morning. We have seen a Pompilus take the greatestcare in selecting a sheltered spot under some leaves, where she afterward hung herself up, and slept soundly until after eight the next day; and Mr. Brues has found companies of Priononyx atrata passing the night on the stems of sweet clover.Chapter VIAN ISLAND SETTLEMENTOUR children often made themselves useful by reporting finds in the shape of nests, and one day they returned from the island with a wonderful tale of great numbers of big wasps that were digging in the ground. “I don’t know what they are,” said the small boy, “but they act to me like the maddest kind of hornets.” With this attractive picture before us, we lost no time in going over to the spot, where we found a thriving colony of Bembex spinolæ. On our approach they fell upon us, “desire of blood, and rage, and lust of fight” in their mien, and chased us to a distance, but without inflicting a single wound. This temperance was not due to gentleness of disposition, but to the fact that Bembex is not at all handy with her sting, her body being too large and clumsy to curve and give the lightning stab as other wasps do. With renewed courage we again approached them, more cautiously this time, and soon learned that if we preserved an extremely composed and dignified demeanor our presence on the field would be tolerated.Bembex, like Philanthus, and some species of Sphex, lives in a sort of semi-social state, a number of individuals occupying the same space of ground, although each one has its separate nest. Bembex, however, differs from these genera and from almost all of the solitary wasps in her habit of feeding her young from day to day, or rather from hour to hour, as long as it remains in the larval state. This difference in her maternal cares as compared with those of other species results in a less numerous progeny. The larva, for a period of two weeks, demands constant attention from the mother, so that a second egg cannot be laid until the first-born has gone into its cocoon, unless, indeed, she feeds two larvæ at once, which does not seem probable. The season of work is ten or twelve weeks, so that Wesenberg is probably correct in allowing only five or six young ones to each mother for the summer.In watching our wasps we found that the new nests were usually made in the outskirts of the colony, which was thus continually extending its limits. Like many other species, Bembex has great difficulty in deciding just where to dig. Our Sphex made three beginnings before finally settling down. The only Ammophila that we watched from the beginning changed her place after working for ten minutes. P. quinquenotatus often triedhalf a dozen places before she was satisfied, and spinolæ is quite as difficult to please.When, at last, the right place is found, the labor of excavation is carried on vigorously. The mandibles are used for loosening the earth, and for lifting, but the greater part of the work is done with the first pair of legs, the tarsi of which are doubled up while the dirt is swept out with the brush of stiff spiny hairs on the second joint. This attitude gives them a very comical aspect, making them look as if they were sweeping with their elbows. They sometimes lie far over to one side while loosening the earth with their mandibles. While digging, the body is held high by the straightening of the third pair of legs, and the dirt comes out behind in a rapid stream, flying to a distance of three or four inches. Before long the wasp is lost to sight, but every few moments she comes backing out, pushing behind her the dirt that she has displaced below. In about fifteen minutes the nest is ready, and the wasp turns her attention to scattering all the dirt that has been thrown out, sweeping the ground clean so that no sign of her work remains. We have often speculated as to the meaning of the careful and conscientious performance of this part of her task. With the wasps that nest by themselves it is not easy to see what enemy they are providing against in hiding theentrance to the nest; but the precaution seems still less necessary—even absurd—in the Bembex field, where there is no possibility of concealing the colony, and where the nests are only an inch or two apart, so that an enemy might burrow anywhere with the certainty of finding one. Moreover, the only enemy that we could discover was the parasitic fly, which never attempts to enter when the hole is closed. However, unmoved by our opinion on the subject, spinolæ spends five or six minutes of her precious time in making the neighborhood of her home quite tidy, and then she fills in the mouth of the nest with a little loose earth before going away to catch her fly.Oxybelus, though she is limited in choice by her small size, can catch a fly in three or four minutes. Bembex is strong enough to take anything that she sees, and she has no preference for one species above another, yet she seldom finds one under twenty or twenty-five minutes. When she comes back nothing of the fly is visible unless it is unusually large, so closely is it held under her body by the second pair of legs. She alights, and scratches away the loose earth at the entrance of the nest with her first legs, and then, as she creeps within, she passes the fly along from the second to the third pair, so that the end of its body, projecting beyond the abdomen of thewasp, is visible for an instant before it is carried inside. Sometimes she drops the fly behind her, and then, turning around, pulls it in with her mandibles. In other cases, where a longer portion of the tunnel has been filled with earth, the fly is left lying on the ground while the wasp clears the way. This offers a favorable opportunity to parasites, especially as the fly is not placed with regard to its safety, but is dropped anywhere. The dirt that is kicked out sometimes covers it so that when the way is clear the careless proprietor must search it out and clean it off before she can store it away. In one instance, in which we had been opening a nest close by, the tunnel was entirely blocked by the loose earth which we had disturbed, and the wasp worked for ten minutes before she cleared a way to her nest. During part of this time she held the fly, but when she realized that it was going to be a long piece of work she laid it down near by. As the wasp enters she sometimes leaves the hole open behind her, but oftener fills it by pushing up earth from below. When she comes out again she throws in a little dirt, and then begins to circle about the place. She seems not quite easy about the nest, however, returning three or four times to scratch earth over the entrance, before finally taking her departure.We opened a good many nests in the course of thesummer, and found them all very much alike, much more so than is the case with other species. The entrance tunnel runs in obliquely for from three to five inches below the surface of the ground, and ends in a pocket.We grow accustomed to marvels, and from our familiarity with other wasps we take as a matter of course the unerring accuracy with which Bembex swoops down upon the exact spot at which the entrance to her nest is hidden. And yet how strange a power it is! There is not the least sign to help her—not a stone, not a blade of grass is to be seen on the field. Our method of marking a nest which we wished to find again was to place tiny pebbles at exactly equal distances from it, one on either side, so that the middle point of the straight line between them gave us the desired spot; and the wasp doubtless uses the same method, only her landmarks are sometimes so infinitesimal that we do not recognize them.Bouvier finds that when he cuts away the plants around the nest of B. labiatus, clearing a space of twenty-eight or thirty inches square, the wasp is much confused, flying about for a long time before she is able to find her home. He once placed a flat stone over the entrance. The wasp alighted upon it, and after scratching vainly for a while made her way in. The stone wasleft in this position for two days, during which time Bembex learned to regard it as a landmark, for upon its being removed to a distance of eight inches she still followed it upon returning with her fly, and insisted upon finding her nest near it.ill125NEST OF BEMBEXAn observation of Marchand points to the same conclusion. He says:—On July seventeenth, 1900, during a short sojourn at Pouliguen, on returning from a hunt after Diptera and Hymenoptera in the cliffs of Caudan, about eleven in the morning, in tropical heat, I paused to take breath near the old mill of Caudan and looked about for a little shadebefore continuing my walk to Pen-Château. I had seated myself on the stones of a slope shaded from the sun and was wiping the perspiration from my forehead, when I saw a large wasp arrive directly before me. I instinctively followed it with my eyes; it paused some yards from the mill on the side of the cliff, and began to open a nest which was placed scarcely twenty inches from the foot of a swallow-wort, a rather common plant in the neighborhood of the ruin. She was Bembex rostrata at work at provisioning her nest.Moved by curiosity, instead of going on to breakfast, I awaited the exit from the nest, which took place in about five minutes. Bembex scratched the sand and took flight from the side of the cliff. How long would she be away? I looked at my watch and arose.Ought I to go or to wait a little while? I took the latter decision. Out of malice, and without any idea of trying a control experiment to the admirable observations which science owes to the naturalist of Sérignan, of whom I was not thinking at all, I cut close to the sand the stalk of the swallow-wort and planted it a little nearer the mill, moving it about two feet, and being careful to put in place of the plant a little fragment of a bottle which I found in the mill. I seated myself in the shade and waited. Twenty minutes later the wasp dropped straight on to the place where I had cut the plant, that is to say, it deviated from its nest by a distance about equal to the displacement to which I had subjected the swallow-wort. It walked right and left, agitating its antennæ, appearing confused as to the locality.I followed these goings and comings for two or three minutes. Several times it flew away and then returned, always searching about. Pitying it and desiring, since I was now relieved of the fatigue which the heat had caused me, to go back to breakfast, I took my net and drawing near, made as if to catch it, swinging the pocket rapidly about. It veered away with a quick jerk of the wings. I then took up the swallow-wort, lifting the fragment which marked its original place, and replanted it in the sand.I again looked at my watch to see whether I could consecrate yet a few more minutes to curiosity without making my kind host, my friend Dr. MceRivron, and his wife, who honored me with the charming hospitality of Kursac, wait too long. It was only half past eleven; we usually did not breakfast until about noon; it would take only a quarter of an hour to traverse the distance from the mill of Caudan to the house. I could then, without fear of being chided, dispose of fifteen minutes. This lapse of time would perhaps suffice to show me whether mybestiolewould this time find the way to her nest without hesitation.I waited a little; five minutes had not passed when my Bembex, coming like an arrow, alighted on the sand near the plant, still holding the prey which I had noticed when she departed at my chasing her, after her vain attempts to find the entrance to her nest; but this time she did not hunt long. She felt about a little to right and left, but soon turned directly toward the entrance to the tunnel, distant scarcely two inches from the place where she had settled. My Bembex had a memory.A curious thing about these wasps, and one which shows how much common feeling they have, is that they work in waves, all starting off on their hunting expeditions within a few minutes of each other, and returning together after the chase. At one time all the residents seem to be present, digging their nests, carrying in their booty, dashing at each other, and chasing the parasites with a tremendous amount of humming and swooping about. Then suddenly they are all gone. Nothing remains but multitudes of flies, which keep up a giddy dance over the field, and for ten or fifteen minutes the place seems deserted. Then the wasps begin to return, several coming at a time, and as if by magic the whole scene awakens to life. More than half of the wasps bring nothing home with them, and these fall to robbing their more fortunate companions. Those that are carrying flies must pause a moment, burdened as they are, to scratch away the earth at the entrance to the nest. When unmolested they go in very quickly, but it is just at this point that the marauders fall upon them, displaying an amount of persistence and energy in their attacks that, were it properly directed, might easily enable them to secure flies for themselves.We once saw a wasp that had been fortunate enough, or perhaps unfortunate enough, to catch an immensefly, the wings of which stood out on both sides very conspicuously. This made her an especial mark for her unprincipled relatives. Half a dozen of them chased her about, like chickens pursuing one of their number that has found a worm. She circled and settled, and circled and swooped around for five or six minutes, continually pursued and attacked by the robbers, and quite unable to get into her nest. At last, curious to see what she was carrying, we made her drop her load, and secured it for ourselves. We found it to be a horse fly, quite dead, but showing no marks of violence. It was not wasted, for we afterward fed it to one of our wasp nurslings at home.At another time we saw one wasp attack another that was bringing in a fly. In the struggle that ensued the owner lost her booty, as the two rolled over and over on the ground, and as they parted it was seized by the thief. They clinched again, and rolled on the ground as before, and this time the fly was recovered by the rightful owner. At this point, thinking that perhaps one of the wasps was a male, and that this might be their style of courtship, we seized both of them; whereupon the fly was dropped, and the two wasps turned their attention to attacking us. Both proved to be females. Not only do the Bembecids fight in this way for the possession of their prey—they quarrel even without apparent cause.We have seen two females digging their nests at a little distance apart, one of which was repeatedly attacked by the other, although she did nothing to provoke the aggressor. They are certainly very unneighborly, and have no idea of living in harmony. When flying in a threatening manner, either at us or at each other, they have a way of wagging their abdomens violently from side to side in a way well calculated to inspire terror.In warm sunny weather spinolæ works industriously through the middle of the day, and seems determined to provide abundantly, not only for her own offspring, but for any unbidden guests that it may be her fate to care for. She never works more than four or five hours a day, however, and in unfavorable weather she does not work at all. On going over to the island one cloudy morning to spend some hours in watching the Bembex activities, we found the spot quiet and lifeless. No one seeing it for the first time would have dreamed of the multitudes of living creatures beneath his feet. The nests seemed to be all closed, but on peering curiously about we found one on sloping ground, in the suburbs of the colony, of which the door was open. Just within was the proprietor gazing out on the landscape, as she is shown in the illustration. She seemed to be leaning on her elbows, and her face, enlivened by two great goggle eyes, had anirresistibly comical aspect. With the exception of the omnipresent flies, this wasp was the only sign of life about the place. Even in good weather, and in working hours, the wasps sometimes rest, for we have seen them go in empty-handed, closing the door behind them, to remain for half an hour at a time.ill131BEMBEX SPINOLÆ LOOKING OUT OF NESTThere is one thought that must strike even a casual observer at the sight of the hordes of parasites that hover over a Bembex colony:—“The buzzing flies, a persevering train,Incessant swarm, and chased return again.”Why do not these wasps, fly-catchers as they are by profession, kill the worthless wretches that infest their homes, thriving abundantly on the fruits of their labor, a continual menace to the life and safety of their offspring? To the uninitiated it would seem that these flies might serve as food for the wasp larvæ quite as well as any of the dozen species that they actually take; but even if the wasp-mother believes that they possess indigestible qualities, it would be much less trouble to kill them and throw them away than to be perpetually chasing them to a little distance only to see them return as soon as she gives her attention to anything else. Whatever the reason for it may be, the relation between the wasps and the flies is certainly most curious and puzzling. Fabre’s explanation is that since this miserable little fly has its own part to play in nature, Bembex must respect it, thus preserving harmony in the world of living things. The idea is perfectly in accord with his own theories, but we find ourselves quite unable to accept it.There can be no doubt that the parasites are a grave danger to Bembex. She suffers from them far more than any other wasp that we are familiar with, her mode of feeding the young rendering her peculiarly susceptibleto their attacks. Of the ten or twelve nests that we opened only one was free from them, the others containing from two to five lively maggots nearly as large as the wasp larvæ, which were sharing the food brought in by the mother. Fabre, who has studied the question thoroughly, has found as many as ten parasitic larvæ in one nest. He has also noticed that where the parasites are most numerous the wasp-larva is proportionately small and emaciated, reaching only one half or one third of its normal size. When it attempts to spin its cocoon it has not strength enough to do so, and thus perishes miserably among the pupæ of the interlopers, which have the advantage of developing more rapidly. He has proved, by experiments upon nests transported to his study, that although the invaders preserve friendly relations with the rightful owner of the nest so long as food is abundant, they nevertheless, at the first suggestion of scarcity, fall upon the wasp larva and ruthlessly devour it. This “black action” he has seen with his own eyes. In view of this base ingratitude, we are more than ever impressed with the troubles of the poor Bembex mother, as she tries to feed a dozen mouths where she has bargained for only one.We several times saw a fly follow a wasp into her nest, remaining within for half a minute, and it is probablethat they go in to lay their eggs. According to Fabre, it is the habit of the flies that are parasitic upon the half-dozen species of Bembex that he has studied to seize the moment at which the fly projects from under the abdomen of the wasp as she enters the nest; and he has even known them to lay two or three eggs on one fly in the instant of time that its body was exposed.Fabre took a partly grown Bembex larva from the nest, where it was surrounded by the remains of twenty flies. He fed it generously, and it ate sixty-two more, making a total of eighty-two in the eight days that passed before the spinning of the cocoon. Our experiments in this line gave similar results. We took charge of a partly grown larva on the afternoon of August tenth, and between that date and August fifteenth, when it spun its cocoon, it ate forty-two house flies besides a big Tabanus.Fabre thinks that under natural conditions the mother does not give the larva all it can eat at one time, but provides it with what she considers a reasonable amount of food, and keeps anything that she catches beyond this out of its reach. He draws his conclusion from the fact that he has found several flies in the tunnel leading to the nest, while the larva had as many more close to it. It would certainly be convenient for Bembex to have areserve of this kind in case of rainy weather, but the forethought implied in such an action seems to require a higher degree of intelligence than can be claimed for her.In one nest we found a single fly with a long cylindrical egg attached to the left side of the thorax just at the origin of the third leg. In another, which we had seen made and provisioned, we found, six days later, a larva which we judged to be four days old. Assuming that the egg was laid on the first day, it must have taken it about two days to hatch. Other nests gave us larvæ in all stages of development, surrounded by the remains of Diptera, among which Syrphus, Tabanus, and Musca were represented.In regard to the condition of the flies captured by Bembex, we have never seen the crushing of the thorax, which is noted by both Wesenberg and Fabre. Indeed, the flies that we found were not always dead, since in two instances they responded readily to stimulation. Similar results have been obtained by Mr. S. W. Dunning of Hartford, Connecticut.Twice we have seen our spinolæ, as she was bringing home her prey, alight near the nest and sting it as it was held with the second pair of legs. We could see the process distinctly, since she is slow and clumsy, and, in oneinstance, had difficulty in reaching the fly, falling over to one side in an awkward manner. It is probable, then, that this is a habit with the wasp, but that the sting is usually given at the place of capture.We opened a number of Bembex nests, but succeeded in raising only one larva, which we took when it was half grown. This one, during the five days that passed before it spun the cocoon, ate forty-three flies.Mr. Bates has some notes on Monedula signata, which takes nothing but flies, and even confines itself to a single species, although it must sometimes go half a mile away to find it. This reminds us of Pompilus quinquenotatus, which never takes anything but Epeira strix.ill136BEMBEXA considerable contribution to our knowledge of the genus Bembex has been made in the paper by Wesenberg (written in Danish) which has already been referred to. This paper deals with Bembex rostrata. It was translated for Mr. Ashmead by Mr. Martin Linell.ill137A CORNER OF THE BEMBEX COLONY.It seems that rostrata makes its nest in solid sand, covering it up with loose sand, and usually, also, with a little flat stone, to prevent parasites from entering. The cell measures one cubic inch, the entrance tunnel being one and one half centimeters long, and arcuate. A cell contains four or five fresh flies (Lucilia, Eristalis, etc.), and torn-off wings, sucked-out thoraces, and in the middle of these, a big flat larva.When the larva is hatched the mother brings more and more flies, the flies being larger and larger as it grows. This adjustment of the size of the fly to the growth of the larva has also been noted by Fabre.Wesenberg says that fifty Bembecids will nest on a spot as big as a room during a period of three months. The time required for the development of the larva is two weeks, this giving five or six young ones for the season. He queries, “Does each female have more than one nest? and if so, how can she remember them?” To determine this point we marked six wasps by touching them with differently colored paints, putting near their nests pebbles painted to correspond with the owners, and then watched them closely for three hours.During this time the red wasp returned regularly to the red nest, the blue to the blue, and so on. They were watched for an hour and a half on the following day with the same result, so that it seems quite certain that spinolæ has only one nest at a time. To feed two larvæ at once, with interlopers thrown in, would be a heavier task than the most determined industry could accomplish.Chapter VIITHE BURROWERSDUFOUR, in describing the fearful ravages of Cerceris ornata among the bees, says that the wasps of this genus are among other insects what eagles and hawks are among birds. While this characterization does not seem to fit the American species, it is certainly true that the genus stands out as one of those in which the distinctive peculiarities are strongly marked. They might be considered the aristocrats in the world of wasps, their habits of reposeful meditation and their calm, unhurried ways being far removed from the nervous manners of the Pompilidæ or the noisy, tumultuous life of Bembex. Their intelligence is shown by their reluctance to betray their nests, and by their uneasiness at any slight change in the objects that surround them. It is not necessary to attempt to catch them or to make threatening gestures, in order to arouse their sense of danger. If you are sitting quietly by a nest when the wasp opens her door in the morning she will notice you at once, and will probably drop out of sight as thoughshe resented your intrusion into her privacy. After a little she will come up again and will learn to tolerate you, but at the least movement on your part, almost at the winking of an eyelid, she will disappear.ill142NEST OF CERCERIS NIGRESCENSOur four representatives of this genus all prey upon beetles that are injurious to vegetation, and therefore deserve the gratitude of agriculturists. Nigrescens, with her pale grayish bands, is a very trying wasp to deal with. We had seen her flying about in the garden for weeks before we succeeded in tracking her home, and when we did succeed she was so late about getting up in the morning, stayed away from home so many hours at a time, and went to bed so early in the afternoon, that we were not well repaid for watching her nest all day. Fumipennis, large and handsome, with a broad yellow band at the front of the abdomen, is another wasp that has noregard for the convenience of the people who are watching her. You may sit by her big open hole for hours without seeing her, and when she comes she drops in so suddenly that, unless you are very much on your guard, you are not sure even then what she is. Clypeata and deserta are better subjects for study.The nests of our species are all deep, tortuous, and very difficult to excavate. We have never succeeded in finding their pockets; and yet, for various reasons, we feel perfectly certain that all of them are like C. ornata in provisioning, successively, a number of cells which lead out of the main gallery. When one of these cells is filled with food, and the egg deposited, it is probably closed up, and thus separated from the runway. From our experience late in the season with the nests of another wasp, we are inclined to think that we made a mistake in looking for pockets at the lower end of the tunnel. Had we searched higher up, at the point of the curve, we might have found them, the lower part of the gallery probably beingdesigned merely for a dwelling-place for the mother of the family.ill143CERCERIS CLYPEATABut although we did not get distinct pockets, there was, in at least one nest, a supply of food that would have far exceeded the wants of a single larva. We did not succeed in finding eggs on different groups of beetles; but from a nest into which the wasp was still carrying food we took a half-grown larva which was identified as being hers. The fact, too, that a wasp occupies a nest for so long a time as ten days or two weeks points to the conclusion that she uses it for a number of eggs which are laid at intervals.Cerceris digs her nest, deep as it is, all at once. In this she is a contrast to her near relatives of the genus Philanthus, who busy themselves for an hour or so every morning with fresh excavations.On the eighth of July the weather was so warm and bright that we went down to the garden at half past eight o’clock, knowing that it was rather early, but hoping that the hot sunshine would tempt the wasps to industry. We had walked up and down several times, when suddenly, right in the pathway, a nest appeared. A great quantity of loose earth had been taken out and heaped up, probably on the preceding day, and in the midst of this a little hole had been opened since wepassed before. The place looked so promising that we sat down to watch it, and a few minutes later we were rewarded by a glimpse of some antennæ down the gallery, and then a little face with yellow markings appeared but quickly vanished. Now followed a very coquettish performance. The wasp came slowly creeping up again and again, only to drop out of sight as soon as she had reached the opening. After a time she grew bolder, and sat in her doorway, twitching her head this way and that in a very expressive manner, as though she were planning the work of the day; but it was plain that although she was up early, business cares were not weighing heavily upon her mind, for forty minutes passed before she came out of the nest, and after making three or four circles about the spot, flew away.How much livelier and more interesting it would have been if we could have followed her! We tried to guess at what she was doing, and imagined her hunting industriously. After fifteen or twenty minutes it seemed to us that she must have caught something, and that she was surely returning. Most probably she was not working at all, but was breakfasting leisurely and exchanging compliments with her neighbors; for when she did come home after keeping us waiting for an hour and a half, she brought nothing with her, and seemedquite unconscious of the fact that greater things had been expected of her.We had placed a stone upon a dead leaf near by, to mark the neighborhood of the nest, thinking that even a Cerceris could not object to so simple an arrangement of natural objects; but our wasp noticed it at once, and evidently with much suspicion and disapproval. She began by circling several times just above it. Then she alighted on it and examined it carefully, walking over it, and creeping underneath, perhaps to see whether it in any way menaced the safety of her nest, perhaps as the completion of a locality study made the day before. She then rose on her wings, and after a little more circling, dropped suddenly into her hole.So far we had not been getting on very rapidly, but from this time things took a turn. Cerceris is never in a hurry, and yet she may be relied upon to do a certain amount of work every day. The one that we were now watching had probably come back for a final look at her newly made nest before beginning to provision it; for she soon reappeared, and this time really went to work, since in forty minutes she brought home a beetle which she carried by the snout, venter up, in her mandibles, supporting it with the second pair of legs while flying. She was much annoyed at our presence, and circledabout as before. Twice she alighted near by, and walked around for a few minutes, and when she did this all her feet came down to the ground, the beetle being allowed to hang loosely. At last she made the best of a bad matter, and went in. The rest of the morning was occupied with hunting, the capture of each beetle taking about forty-five minutes. Every time that she came home she spent fifteen or twenty minutes in the nest.This species soon became very common, and for two weeks scarcely a morning passed without our finding at least one newly-made nest. The study of clypeata, however, consumes a great deal of time. For example, we found, one morning, two nests within six inches of each other. It turned out afterward that these were inhabited by two different wasps; but at the moment we supposed that one of them had been dug and deserted and then a second one made, and wishing to know which one was occupied we resolved to watch and see. After waiting for three hours we saw one wasp returning; but upon noticing us she veered off and began to circle about. She was heavily laden, and her burden, instead of being supported by the second pair of legs, as is sometimes the case, hung down under the thorax and abdomen. After a moment she alighted on a plant near by, and seemed to consider the situation, then circled a little more, andflew away, remaining out of sight for fifteen minutes, then another return, more circlings and hesitations. She seemed to feel the weight of the beetle now, and alighted frequently on the ground and walked about; yet she would not go in, so reluctant was she to betray her nest. In this way she kept us waiting for a whole hour, although we were not very near to her, and were as still as statues. At last we retreated, and stood as far back as we could and still keep the hole in view. She now came closer, and, after hanging poised on her wings for a moment, dropped into her nest.We once found a nest of this species in process of construction. A large heap of fresh earth had been pushed out, which entirely covered the spot; but at intervals there were upheavals from below which betrayed the presence of the wasp. When we saw it first it was half past eight o’clock, and we judged, from what had been accomplished, that she must have been at work at least an hour. It was half past nine before the excavation was complete. We had not been certain, up to this time, as to what we were watching; but now we had the pleasure of seeing her open her doorway from below and stand in the entrance while she washed her face with her fore feet, like a cat. When they rest at the mouth of the hole the first legs, which are yellow, are bowed in a semicircleon each side of the yellow face, the distal joints being bent up so that the wasps seem to be standing on their elbows. This attitude, which is often seen in Bembex spinolæ, gives them a delightfully amusing, bow-legged appearance. They usually open their nests in the morning at about nine o’clock,—a little earlier or later according to the time at which the sun strikes the spot. Then they spend from forty minutes to an hour in taking a survey, the least movement on the part of a watcher causing them to drop out of sight as if the earth had given way beneath them. Sometimes there is a little way-station an inch or two within the tunnel, and the wasp falls back only to this point, and here she may be seen, if one peeps in cautiously, either quietly awaiting the retreat of the intruder, or, perhaps, performing her toilet in a leisurely and elegant manner.Whenever she leaves her nest she makes three or four rapid circles around the spot to freshen her memory of the locality. The most thorough study that we saw made by clypeata was in the case of the wasp mentioned before, that was so long in carrying her beetle in because of our being on the ground. When she finally did go in she stayed only an instant—just long enough to deposit her load—and then came out and spent a long time in an investigation of all the surrounding objects,flying in and out among the plants, now high, now low, and circling again and again around the spot. It looked as though she had been puzzled and disturbed by the presence of unaccustomed things. As soon as the survey was over she went inside and closed the door, as though its object had been not so much to strengthen her memory as to correct former impressions.The work of bringing in beetles goes on very irregularly, and as a rule not more than two or three are stored in the course of a day. It is not unusual for clypeata to spend three or four hours away from home and then come back without anything; and often, even in the middle of the day, she passes an hour or two in the seclusion of her nest. We had several nests under observation for a week at a time without ever once seeing the owners, although they were evidently occupied, since they were sometimes open and sometimes closed. The outer entrance is always left open when the wasp goes away, although possibly access to the pockets may be barred below; but when she enters she closes the door unless she means to come out again at once. The closing is sometimes effected by pushing the earth up backwards, with the end of the abdomen; but the hole is rather too large for this method, and more frequently the wasp comes up head first, carrying a load of earth in her frontlegs. This is placed just within and to one side of the entrance, and then more armfuls are brought up, until, after two or three trips, the opening is entirely filled.We once captured the wasp in a bottle, as she returned, loaded, to the nest. She dropped the beetle, but soon picked it up again and stung it vigorously,with intention, as the French say, first under the neck, and then further back, behind the first pair of legs. After this it was dropped while the wasp fluttered about for a few minutes, but it was then picked up again, and stung as before. We both saw this operation repeated in exactly the same way, four different times, with intervals of five or six minutes between.In a nest which we excavated after watching it for nine days, we found nothing until we had gone six inches down, and at this point the tunnel was lost; but mixed with the crumbly earth that we took out of the hole, we found eight beetles and a half-grown larva of clypeata. The destruction of this nest was accomplished one morning, and when we came back to the spot twenty-four hours later we found that a new one had been made close by, doubtless by the same individual. We had expected to find her bringing beetles and dropping them foolishly on the ground like Paul Marchal’s Cerceris ornata, and were gratified that she showed an advancein intelligence over that species, although to be sure she would have been still wiser had she chosen an entirely new neighborhood. Another individual was so much disturbed by our scrutiny that she dropped her beetle at the entrance to her nest. She did not pick it up again and utilize it, although it lay for three days in the dust at the threshold.As to the condition of the beetles stored by clypeata: in the first nest that we opened we found eight, seven of which were dead, while the eighth, which we had just seen stung several times, was alive, but died on the following day. The second nest gave us five beetles, all of them dead and dry. In the other nests that we opened we found nothing, though we knew that the beetles were there had we only been skillful enough to discover them.Of Cerceris deserta, which closely resembles clypeata, but appears later in the season, we had only a single example. We chanced to see her dropping into a crevice among some lumps of earth, and at first could scarcely believe that this was the dwelling-place of a wasp, as there was nothing whatever about it to indicate a nest; and even after we had removed the rough pieces of earth above, we could see nothing of the loose material that must have been carried out.She was much like clypeata in her manners, with thesame habit of surveying the world from her doorway, and manifesting the same annoyance at our presence when she was returning to the nest; but she carried in more beetles in the course of the day and worked much more rapidly. Between nine and eleven o’clock one morning she brought in five loads, and some of the journeys occupied only ten minutes.ill153CERCERIS DESERTA: LOCALITY STUDY BEFORE LEAVING NESTThe first time that she found us sitting by her nest she circled about for nearly an hour, seeming unable to make up her mind to enter. At length we withdrew a little way, but still her suspicions were not entirelyallayed; and after a further study of the situation she dropped, not into her own nest, but into a large cricket hole near by. Taken aback by this manœuvre, and thinking that perhaps we had a second individual to deal with, we stealthily approached, and peering in, could see the cricket inside, the wasp having slipped beyond. It did not seem possible that the little creature could be endeavoring to deceive us, and yet what other explanation could be offered for her conduct? We again took up our distant position, and after ten minutes more had the satisfaction of seeing the wasp slip out of the false nest and drop instantly into the true one. After a little she became quite accustomed to us, and entered her nest without the least delay.The prey of deserta is held in the mandibles, and while we were watching her she did not support it with the second legs, even when flying.Philanthus punctatus is a pretty little yellow-banded species much resembling Cerceris in appearance. The nest consists of a main gallery with pockets leading from it, each pocket being stored with one egg and enough bees to nourish a single larva. When the wasps emerge from the cocoon they find themselves in the company of their nearest relatives and in possession of a dwelling-place, and they all live together for a time before startingout independently to seek their fortunes. On the fifth of August we discovered on the island a happy family of this kind, consisting of three brothers and four sisters, the females, with their bright yellow faces and mandibles, being handsomer than the males. They seemed to be on the most amicable terms with each other, their only trouble being that while they were all fond of looking out, the doorway was too small to hold more than one at a time. The nest was opened in the morning at about nine o’clock, and during the next thirty or forty minutes their comical little faces would appear, one after another, each wasp enjoying the view for a few minutes with many twitchings of the head, and then retreating to make way for another, perhaps in response to some hint from behind. Then one by one they would come out, circle about the spot, and depart, sometimes leaving one of their number to keep house all day alone. They usually left the hole open; but when there was a wasp within, it was soon closed from below. During this playtime period they did not return until they were ready to settle down for the night, the first one coming home at half after two or three o’clock, and the others arriving at intervals, none of them staying out later than five. Most commonly they found the right spot without trouble, scratched open the hole, and then either closedit behind them or stood waiting in the doorway for the next arrival; but occasionally they had difficulty in locating the nest, and worked at two or three different places before finding it.We kept these wasps under close observation, often watching the nest from the moment it was opened in the morning until it was closed at night. On the twelfth of August, a week from the time that we first saw them, one of the females felt the responsibilities of life settling down upon her. At half after four in the afternoon she began to enlarge the nest, and worked with a great deal of energy for forty minutes. After a long disappearance within the hole she would come up backwards, kicking behind her a quantity of earth which was not only taken outside, but was then spread out far and wide. She worked with the front pair of legs, which were curved inward, after the manner of Bembex; and when a pebble or some such object came in her way she either dragged it to a distance with her mandibles or pushed it before her with her head in a way quite peculiar to herself. In distributing the earth that was taken out, she went five and one half inches from the nest—a distance which is much greater than is common among wasps, but which accords well with the habits of punctatus, since she continues the work of excavation from day to day.ill157PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUSOn August thirteenth, at half after eight in the morning, we found that a second female, perhaps inspired by the example of her sister, had made a new nest within two inches of the first one, and had flown away, leaving it open. Presently the other wasps began to appear, one after the other, in their doorway. Two of the males flew away, and one of the females, doubtless the one that we had seen digging the night before, began to work afresh at making the nest larger. Probably she was excavating a pocket for the reception of an egg, and the amount of labor required was enormously increased by the great length (about twenty-two inches) of the main gallery by which the displaced earth must be carried out. She worked for an hour, and in spreading the dirt about, inadvertently filled in the opening of the second nest. At length she flew away.At ten o’clock a female arrived carrying a bee, and tried to find nest No. 2. She came to the wrong place, and worked about, here and there, for some minutes, holding the bee under the thorax, clasped by the secondpair of legs. Being unsuccessful, she dropped her burden, and flew away for a few minutes. While she was gone we removed a leaf that had fallen over her nest, and on her return she at once descended upon the right spot, and began to scratch open the entrance, the bee being kicked backward with the rejected earth. When the way was clear, however, she picked it up, brought it toward the hole, dropped it, ran in and out, brought it nearer, ran in again, and turning around in the tunnel, seized the bee in her mandibles and pulled it down. This performance was due to the accidental obstruction of the gallery, for we afterward found that punctatus ordinarily flies directly into her nest, or, when it is closed, pauses on the wing to scratch an opening with the first legs. The bee is pushed backward a little as she goes in, but does not often project from under her abdomen.At fifteen minutes after ten the worker from nest No. 1 brought in a bee, and from that time the two worked industriously. They showed some individuality in their ways, for No. 2 always closed her door when she went away, and never circled at all, while No. 1 invariably circled before leaving, and always left her nest open. To be sure, there was a female left on guard, so that perhaps she did not feel the need of caution.Our wasps had not far to go for their victims. Forty feet away, on the eastern side of the island, was a steep declivity, and here, in the soft crumbly soil, was a great Halictus settlement. No prettier sight can be imagined than is presented by this colony on every sunny summer day. The whole bank is riddled with nests, and at the entrance of each stands a female bee, her tiny head exactly filling the opening. The bees are constantly arriving, laden with pollen, whereupon the sentinels politely back inward to make way for them. Into this scene of contented industry descends the ravaging Philanthus, taking guards and workers alike.On the afternoon of the fourteenth of August our two wasps were in the full tide of affairs. No. 1 took in eleven bees within two hours, but her record was somewhat confused, as two other females were going in and out at the same time. We felt sure that neither of these was hunting, but one of them shared in the labor of the nest by helping with the work of excavation.No. 2, however, was alone, so that we could keep a definite account of her comings and goings. We watched her from half past one until five, at which hour she came home without a load, and at once closed the nest for the night, after having stored thirteen bees in three hours and nine minutes. In some cases the capture ofthe bee occupied only one, two, or three minutes, while at other times she was gone much longer. At each return she stayed only an instant—just long enough to deposit the bee—inside the nest, and then spent a minute in carefully closing the hole. The wasps that were going in and out of nest No. 1 sometimes closed it when they went away, but this was done in an untidy fashion, quite different from the nicety and precision of No. 2.At half after five o’clock the wasp that had been digging for some little time at nest No. 1 flew to nest No. 2, opened it, and attempted to enter, but was quickly driven out by the owner. She then dug a little in several other places, finally returning to sleep in the family home. On the next day we found that No. 2 was tolerating in her nest one of the females that had not yet begun to hunt, but whether it was the one she had rejected the night before or the fourth member of the sisterhood, we could not tell. On the eighteenth, three days later, the wasp had left this temporary home and made a nest for herself four feet away on the hillside. The males were still living in the first nest with two females.When the weather was cold and cloudy punctatus remained closely housed within the nest, or, at most, came out to do an hour’s digging, and then disappeared. The warmer the weather, and the more brilliant thesunshine, the more rapidly they worked. When leaving the nest they would often creep out and walk around it three or four times before rising on their wings, and even then would sometimes alight once or twice before flying away. The males, especially, liked to stand about for a time, watching their more industrious sisters at their work. The females usually began the day with digging, and frequently closed it, toward night, in the same way.In order to see the method of stinging, we at one time provided ourselves with a number of bees, and putting one of them into a bottle, introduced a wasp. She seized it almost immediately, with great vigor, and stung it once, under the neck, and then dragged it up and down the bottle by one antenna which was held in the mandibles. After a moment she shifted it and held it with the second legs in the usual way. We now put in another bee, which she also caught, stung in the same place, and then dropped without relaxing her hold of the first one. As she seemed to have nothing further to show us we released her, and after circling a little she took into her nest the bee that she was carrying.In our next experiment we used a larger glass, thinking that with more space we might see malaxation. The instant that the wasp was introduced she grasped thebee with one rapid powerful motion, and stung it just under the neck as before. Then holding it with the second legs she began to fly about in the glass. We now introduced another bee, whereupon the first one was relinquished, and the second was treated in exactly the same way. The stinging was the beginning and the end of the operation, and when we released her she at once took the bee into the nest. There was no malaxation outside, and certainly there was none within, as was shown by the rapidity with which the wasps issued from the nest after storing the bees. We were successful in getting the wasps to sting only when we tried the experiment with those that were hunting. When those that had not yet begun to store their nests were put into the glass they paid no attention to the bees.The victim of the sting of punctatus is killed at once. Life is extinct from the instant that the stroke is given. This is true also of the honey-bee that is the victim of Fabre’s Philanthus apivorus; but the explanation that he gives of the action of his wasp in thus dealing sudden death instead of paralyzing its foe—that the honey must be sucked out of the bee before it can be safely used as food for the larva—does not hold good in our case, since the honey that Halictus carries to mix with the pollen upon which her offspring are fed, is not removed.ill163NEST OF PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUSA-B, 3½ inches; B-C, 5 inches; C-D, 14 inches; D-E, 8 inchesAs time went on we found on the island two other Philanthus colonies, although that is rather too large a word to apply to them, since one consisted of four nests and the other of only two. When we came to excavate the nests of this species we were greatly astonished at the length of the gallery, and not until then did we properly appreciate the industry of these little wasps. It is no small undertaking to follow one of their tunnels for twenty-two inches, even when, as in this case, the greater part of it is parallel to the surface of the ground. We did not find distinct pockets, as the soil was very crumbly and fell in as we worked, but we came upon clumps of bees an inch or so to one side of the gallery and about three inches apart, with larvæ in different stages of development. In one nest we found twenty-six bees intwo clumps, some of them half-eaten, and some of them fresh, but all quite dead. We have no doubt that punctatus completely provisions one pocket and closes the opening from it into the gallery, before she starts another, making a series of six or eight independent cells. The provision for one larva is probably twelve or fourteen bees, the capture of which, in good weather, would be a fair day’s work.That the males do not always stay on in their ancestral home is shown by an observation that we made on the only occasion that we ever saw this species in our garden. Nothing was stirring at half past three o’clock in the afternoon, and we had given up work and started for home, when, in going up an inclined part of the field, we noticed something in motion within a ragged-edged hole which ran obliquely into the ground. It seemed strange that a wasp should be beginning its nest at so late an hour; but a wasp it was, as we could plainly see when we took an attitude sufficiently humble. It was loosening the earth with its mandibles, and then pushing it backward with its hind legs and abdomen. We had scarcely settled down to watching it when a second one of the same species appeared, and with a good deal of fuss and flutter began to dig its hole close by. The spot chosen by this second one proved unsatisfactory, andanother beginning was made in a new place. Again something was wrong, nor was a third choice any better. At last, however, the work was started in earnest, and might have been carried to a conclusion if we had not caught the little creature to satisfy a suspicion that had been growing in our minds. Yes, we were right. The worker was not a female making a nest for the rearing of her young, but a male punctatus, preparing a shelter for the night.In the mean time the first wasp had pushed back such a quantity of earth that the hole was entirely closed, but every few minutes he came backing out to clear the way. At the end of half an hour all became quiet. The door remained closed, and doubtless the wasp was fast asleep. Putting a blade of grass and then an inverted tumbler over the nest, we left him for the night.On removing the glass at half past seven the next morning, we found the nest open but the wasp not visible. At half past eight the head appeared just inside the hole, the long antennæ twitching now to this side, now to that, as if an inspection were being made. Soon the head came out. The wasp stood for some minutes making a survey, looking to right and left with lively jerks of the body. Then, apparently concluding that the day was not far enough advanced, he came out, whirledaround, and ran head-first into the nest. He probably took another nap, for all was quiet until just before ten o’clock, when the antennæ appeared again. The survey was taken as before, first from within and then with the head in view. At last he flew out, and making three circles, each one wider than the last, about the place, flew away. He stayed out all day, and had not returned at half past three in the afternoon; but on going down at half past four we found that he had gone in and closed the door from below.It is clear, then, that these males do not construct a new lodging every night, but return to the same spot to sleep. Other wasps creep into crevices. We have often found them, in the morning, in the holes of the posts of our cottage porch; but we are glad to be able to put it down to the credit of one male that he has sufficient foresight and industry to provide a sleeping-place, and sufficient intelligence to return to the spot when the declining sun warns him that evening is approaching.While punctatus was in the height of its activity we found another species, P. ventilabris, taking bees of several genera and species into a ground nest. She also carried her prey with her second pair of legs, and whenever she left her nest she closed the door. She was a shy little thing, and did not approve of our interest inher. At one time, being startled by some movement on our part, she dropped her load and flew away. We placed the bee upon the closed nest, and when she came back with another, she paused and looked at it, took in the one she was carrying, and then returned for number one. This was placed on the threshold while she entered and turned around, and was then pulled in. Some wasps, notably C. ornata and our little tornado, refuse to take in their prey, even if they have caught it themselves, excepting in a regular succession of events; and thus the more reasonable conduct of ventilabris gains in interest.To the west of Milwaukee, across the valley of the Menominee, rises a sandy hilltop which is a little insect kingdom by itself. Ants of course abound, and the gentle little solitary bees, with their loads of pollen, may be seen everywhere, seeming to melt into the ground, so quickly and quietly do they open their burrows. Here Oxybelus plys her trade of fly-catching, and graceful Ammophila dances with her shadow over the sunny ground, while Cerceris rests in her doorway with an air of leisurely superiority to the vulgar cares of life; and here, one day in early July, a sudden access of energy seemed to strike Aphilanthops frigidus, a wasp which we had found a year before taking in the wingless queens of ants. All at once they were digging everywhere, bitingand scratching with great energy, and soon disappearing in the depths of their sandy tunnels. So deep is their primary gallery that even in this easy medium it takes them the best part of a day to get it ready for storing; but once finished it doubtless serves as a home through the season. It has at the entrance a little cup-shaped vestibule where the wasp drops the ant as she enters, running out of sight herself, and then, after she has turned around, coming back to pull it within. This nest is a very difficult one to excavate neatly, as the sand falls at the slightest touch.A day or two after we had seen frigidus making her residential arrangements, we found twenty-five or thirty within a few feet of each other, working with great ardor at carrying in queens, the doors being left closed or open according to individual judgment. The steadiest workers brought one every forty minutes, scarcely pausing inside the nest, but others made long stays within, leaving the door closed. The ants were carried under the body with all the legs folded around them, but they were heavy things, and were often dropped as the wasp flew across the field, giving opportunities for robbery that were promptly taken advantage of. We picked up one of these ants and placed it in the doorway of a wasp that had just gone in. She came up twice, looked at it, and backed down again; but the third time she first touched it, then seized it and took it below. From another wasp that was just entering we took the ant she had dropped and moved it half an inch away. When she had turned and come up for it, she seemed surprised, came out and looked about, found it and dropped it in the doorway, going in herself to turn around as before. We seized this chance to move it again, and again she came out, found it, took it back, and dropped it. This was repeated five times, but when she took it in for the sixth time, after dropping it, she whirled around and picked it up so quickly that our malice was foiled.ill169APHILANTHOPS GATHERING ANTS.We were puzzled by the actions of a wasp that approached her nest again and again, but always circled away without entering, until looking closely we saw that she was pursued by two tiny flies. When she alighted and walked about awhile with her ant tucked under the third leg on one side, the flies alighted also and walked about behind her. In the end she evaded them by a sudden drop into her hole.A wasp now came circling along with an ant in her grasp, and settled down between two small weeds that grew about four inches apart. She stood quiet a moment and then began to dig, but had evidently struck the wrong spot, for after a moment she moved and triedanother place. Not finding the entrance, she rose and flew close under one of the plants and began to scratch again, but still in vain. For ten minutes she persisted, keeping within a few inches of the spot, and holding on to the ant all the time, although it was dreadfully in her way as she walked about. Then she dropped it and began to dig more vigorously, dividing her attention between the two spots she had attempted at first. She seemed troubled at having to leave the ant, and often picked it up and tried to hold it while she worked. Once in a while she would take it with her, and after circling about the spot would disappear, but in a few minutes she would return. It seemed to us that two little plants growing near together must have been her landmarks, and that probably she had been deceived by the likeness that those before us bore to the ones near her nest. Again and again she seemed to hesitate and think the matter over, but gradually one of the holes absorbed her more and more. At the end of an hour she was out of sight in it, and had carried her ant down, although she was still kicking out sand. It was evident that her memory had played her false, and that she had either covered her hole so neatly that she could not find the spot herself, or had missed the place entirely. She had accommodated herself to circumstances pretty well,although she ought to have realized earlier that it would be easier to dig one nest than two.We now tried to excavate a nest, but could not follow the tunnel, although we found clumps of ants at different levels, some with larvæ feeding on them. The deepest were eighteen inches down. Hoping to secure a guide, we borrowed an ant as it was dropped in the doorway and tied a thread to it. The wasp pulled it in and took it part way down with this attachment; but before any great depth was reached, the thread was seemingly bitten off, as we found the free end without the ant. A second attempt brought no better results.So long as we were quiet the wasps did not notice us, but after being disturbed they became shy and circled about a good deal before entering. Some of the ants were completely paralyzed, while others moved their abdomens, legs, and mouth parts. All through the morning, the whole place was in a bustle, but when we came back, after eating our luncheon in a shady spot, quiet reigned; the colony seemed asleep, and although we waited for an hour not a wasp showed herself.The ants that these wasps were bringing all had wings. The European genus Fertonius takes worker ants which can be picked up anywhere; but so far as we know, these queens leave the nest only at the time of theirnuptial flight, after which the wings are lost. How then are they captured? Can it be that the wasps, though not much larger than their prey, descend into the home of the ants, bearding the lions in their den, and carrying off their young queens by force of arms? This smacks of heroism.Much interested in the matter, we carefully examined the ant-hills of the neighborhood. Those on top of the hill had openings too small to admit frigidus, supposing she had wanted to enter, but down on the roadside below we found some larger doorways and sat down beside them. We had scarcely arrived when a frigidus appeared on the scene, alighting six feet away. That she should have come hunting so soon seemed almost too good to be true, but she certainly was not doing anything else. She did not dig, nor feed on the clover, nor circle about as though looking for her nest, but began to clean and brush herself assiduously. Then she climbed a tall grass blade, and swinging at the top went through some curious gymnastic performances. Then she brushed herself again, drawing her third legs over the sides of her abdomen. This went on from moment to moment, until half an hour had passed, and more than once the painful suspicion crossed our minds that this was some trifling male putting in the hours between breakfast andluncheon. One encouraging fact cheered us: aimless as the wasp appeared she was slowly drawing nearer and nearer to the nest; and at last, alighting on the top of a weed close by, she crouched there in a most peculiar attitude, and gazed intently at the opening. Absorbed and tense, she looked about to leap upon her prey; but after a time she relaxed and moved about a little. Presently she came close to the entrance and seemed on the point of going in; but the ants were swarming up and down, and we thought that perhaps that step required more courage than she possessed. At any rate, she did not enter, but hung about for some minutes and then flew away.Was this a young wasp out on her first hunt? What strange antiphonal desires must have stirred at the sight of the nest, and how mysterious was the power that drew her to it! Was there in her brain any image of the queen she must seek and sting and carry away from among her guards and subjects? Or had she perhaps already achieved the adventure, and did the memory of the bitter nips that little ant jaws can give make it a harder task than it was the first time, when she risked the ills she knew not of? That she hesitated and carried on the work reluctantly seemed to show that her flesh was weak and needed the prick of conscience to drive it on.Had we here then the small beginnings of moral sense and perception of duty? Can it be that of such humble origin is the power that “doth preserve the stars from wrong”?We went on with these meditations for several days while lingering, with gradually diminishing hopefulness, over one ant-hill after another. The wasps were carrying in winged queens by the score, but they did not come our way to find them; and although we ranged about widely, we failed to see the capture. Occasionally we met a frigidus hunting, running about on the ground and poking her head, not only into ant holes, but into holes of all sorts, and as we sometimes saw young queens (wingless however) starting to dig their nests, we thought these might be the object of the search. The weather was cold and windy, most unpropitious for swarming, and yet frigidus was working as briskly as ever; so that we began to feel sure that she could not depend upon meeting the queens outside the nest, but must enter to get them. Just as this point we received a letter from Mr. William M. Wheeler, well known as an authority on ants, saying that he felt very sure that the wasp could not extract the queens from the nest, but must find them running on the ground, just after the nuptial flight, before they dug their holes and started their colonies.Respecting this opinion, but still feeling unconvinced, we caught a wasp in a glass, and carrying it to an ant-hill, inverted it so that she was confined just over the entrance. After buzzing up and down for a moment, she alighted and walked calmly into the hole; but a fraction of a second later she came rushing madly out again, pursued by the most furious lot of ants that ever defended the home city against invasion. Down tumbled our air castles about courage and duty, for however frigidus gets her queens, it is not in that way. We have not yet seen the meeting and the capture, but hope that sometime we may be lucky enough to be on the right spot at the right time.

Chapter VCRABROTHE highest point of the island is crowned by a great group of linden trees; and one day their perfume, carried by the wind far over field and wood, was calling everything that had wings to gather the richest of all the gifts that July can offer. We, too, were drawn to the spot, and found the great blossoming domes thrilling and vibrating with life. For miles around, the bees, wasps, and butterflies had gathered to the feast; and we seemed to touch the high-tide of the year in the scent of the flowers, the humming throng of happy creatures, and the vision of it all against the summer sky.Below, in a great root that had pushed above ground, five little wasps, by name sexmaculatus, of the worthy but unimaginative genus Crabro, resisting the intoxication of the linden flowers, were sawing and cutting in the most humdrum and practical manner. One of them, presumably the earliest riser, was well down in the root, and came backing up once in a while, pushinga lot of wood dust out of the hole. This was spread out by means of legs and mandibles, and was then blown away by the fanning wings of the little worker, who circled about just above the ground until the last grain had disappeared. Here was another way of protecting the home. The fresh dust might attract the attention of some cuckoo-like insect who would lay her egg within; and therefore it was dispersed, just as Ammophila carried out her pellet and flung it to a distance, and Sphex spread evenly over the ground the mass of earth that she carried from her hole.After this series of actions had been repeated several times the wasp flew away to hunt. We afterward found that she had finished the third in a set of cells leading from a main gallery. On her return we delayed her to see what she was carrying. She showed no fear, but alighted close by, and while she was trying to transfer to the third pair of legs the fly that she was clasping with the second pair, it escaped and flew gayly away. Flies are plenty, however, and she soon had another which she was permitted to store; and from that time she worked busily until we left her at noon. It took her from two to ten minutes to catch her fly, and at each return two or three minutes were spent in the nest. On opening her tunnel some days later, we found within not only flies, but long-bodied gnats, and all of them seemed to have been brought home uninjured. When the freshest cell was opened some flew away, others were walking about, and all were lively. The wasp egg was laid on the under side of the neck; and although we could not be certain of the exact time of laying we thought it hatched at the end of thirty-six hours. From ten to sixteen flies were provided for each larva.ill99SEXMACULATUS IN THE LINDEN ROOTSA month later we found Crabro lentus nesting in the ground. Her tunnel ran down obliquely for six and one half centimeters, and had an enlargement at the end. Two bugs and a fly were in the nest, when we opened it before the provision was completed. To find sexmaculatus taking both flies and gnats was surprising, so rigid are the family traditions of the wasps; still, she might feel that so long as she drew the line at Diptera she was all right. But to believe that one wasp, a Crabro, too, with all the marks of conservatism about her, would take such diverse things as bugs and flies, is almost too much to believe. It is true that Crabro wesmæli is said to use both flies and bugs;[4]but some accident may have led to this supposition, and stronger evidence is needed to prove that there is variability in so deeply seated an instinct.ill103CRABRO AND HER WHITE MOTHS.The Crabro wasps all have pleasant ideas as to where they want to live, but interruptus excels in the choice of a dwelling place. We lately found ten or twelve of them in Milwaukee, nesting in an old log on the shore of Lake Michigan, and when they opened their doors in the morning they had before them the splendor of the great bay; but calm in the midst of the glory they never paused on the threshold, as Cerceris would have done, to take a look at the world before going to work. One morning the earliest riser in our little colony was beginning the day at half past nine. Of good size for a Crabro, with a square determined-looking head and very direct and business-like manners, she proceeded to cut out a new chamber for provisioning. These chambers are nothing more than enlargements of the long gallery, such as are made in stems by related species. At ten o’clock she departed on a hunting excursion among the bushes on the bank above us, and came back in eight minutes, carrying, much to our surprise, a white-winged moth, which was clasped under the body by the second and third pairs of legs, and was passed back to the third pair as she alighted before entering. A moth is an innovation, a delicacy new to the accepted idea of what a Crabro larder, accustomed to Diptera, should contain. A moment later she was off again, but this time did not succeed so quickly, coming back twice empty-handed for brief visits, and bringing in a load at the end of half an hour. It took six moths to provision the cell, and as the number neared completion her interest and energy seemed to wax greater, the hunting intervals shortening to five, and even to two minutes. We found afterwards that some of the moths were alive and some dead, and that she packed them lengthwise, one after another, into the closely fitting chamber. At a little before eleven o’clock the cell was filled, and the wasp retired from sight, closing the door behind her. We thought that she was resting, but presently the protrusion of wood dust showed that she was enlarging her house, and an hour later she came out and began to hunt again. By this time half a dozen were working. Before leaving for the first time in the morning each one made a thorough study of the place, and on returning they entered their own doors, which were standing open, without hesitation, the long white wings of the moths trailing behind them. Four species were represented in the nests that we opened.ill106CRABRO STIRPICOLAMany species of Crabro make their nests in the stems of plants, and among these is stirpicola, which is seen in numbers, through the middle of July, flying about in a leisurely way, though it is only toward the end of the month, or in the early days of August, that they settle down to the work of making their homes. On the afternoon of July twenty-seventh, after some very lively work in the heat of the day, we walked down to the berry garden at half past five o’clock, rather to rest ourselves than with the thought of undertaking anything new; but a wasp-hunter cannot afford to choose his own hours, and we thankfully accepted the sending of fortune when we came upon a stirpicola busy at work in digging out her nest. She had only begun to excavate, and had reached a length just equal to that of her own body. Her manners were an agreeable contrast to those of the wasps that we had been watching through the day. The feverish excitement of their ways seemed quite in keeping with the burning heat of noon, while Crabro’s slow and gentle movements harmonized perfectly with the long shadows of evening. To fully appreciate the difference between Pompilus or Ammophila and Crabro it is necessary to see them at work. The one is the embodiment of all that is restless, vying with the humming-birds in swiftness and energy, whilethe other is calm, quiet, and stately in all that she does.ill-107BOTTLE ON STEM TO MEASURE WORK OF CRABROSome ten feet away was a second stirpicola, and this one, to judge from the depth to which she had penetrated, must have been at work for about two hours. We watched them both, and saw them bring up load after load of pith. They bit out the pellets with their mandibles, and passed them back between the legs and under the body until a quantity had accumulated above the tip of the abdomen. They then walked backward up the stem, and thus pushed out the mass as they came to the top. Often they used the hind legs to assist in getting it out of the way, sometimes kicking it to a little distance. Once in every two or three trips they would come out far enough to expose part of the thorax. They appeared and disappeared with the regularity of a machine, never stopping to rest.We remained with them until seven o’clock, when we placed a long bottle over each stem in such a way that while it did not interfere with the work of the wasp, it caught the chips of pith as theyfell out. At the end of an hour we noted the amount of accumulation in the tube, and thus had a measure of their rate of work. The drawing gives an idea of the arrangement of the tube on the stem. When we left them they were still digging and delving.At half past nine we took a lantern and went down to visit our charges. We expected to find them at rest, and asleep; but on the contrary they were working as busily as ever, and upon examining the measuring glasses we found that they had not paused since we left them. We measured the depth of the débris in the bottles, and then emptied them.At four o’clock on the next morning we went to the garden, and were much surprised to find that the two wasps had worked without intermission throughout the night. Indeed they seemed to have shortened a little the time that it took to make a round trip down the gallery and up to the opening again, since there was more pith in the bottles than we could have expected if they had worked at only their former rate. Neither the coolness of the air nor the darkness of the night had made the slightest difference to them. After watching them a few minutes, and marveling at their powers of endurance, we cleared out the tubes and returned to bed. At half past eight we found them stillat work. Unlike us, they had taken no morning nap, but had gone on with their tunneling in their usual steady way.From this time their ways diverged, and they must be described separately. At nine o’clock the one that we had first seen came up to the opening, walking head first, and flew off, remaining away seven minutes. When she returned she at once resumed her work, and kept at it without a pause until two in the afternoon. At this hour she went away, and we never saw her again. We suppose that she was killed, for it seems improbable that so faithful a creature could have deserted her half-finished home. Pompilus quinquenotatus often deserted a partly finished nest for some more enticing spot, and Sphex started several excavations before making a final choice; but we cannot believe that there was anything fickle about Crabro.The second wasp came up head first to the entrance of her hole at two minutes after nine, as though she had been influenced, in some subtle way, by her neighbor’s example; but after looking about for a moment she went back. She repeated this observation several times, and finally, at twenty-five minutes after nine, came out and flew to a leaf near by. Then she circled around, alighting a number of times, and at lastdeparted. Her stay was brief, for at just thirty-five minutes after nine she returned, and at once settled down to her work.We now began to make notes as to the length of time that it took her to go down and bring back her load. We timed her again and again, and found that she was remarkably regular, each of her trips occupying from forty-five to fifty seconds.All that day we kept her under strict surveillance, and never once did she suspend her operations either for rest or refreshment. Late in the afternoon, while we sat watching her as she appeared and disappeared with almost the regularity of clockwork, we found it difficult to realize that the patient little creature had been at work for more than twenty-four hours, with only one brief intermission. Without hurry or flurry she kept at her task, reminding us, in her business-like ways, of the social wasps of the genus Vespa. When we left her, at dusk, we attached the recording tube to the stem, and at ten o’clock in the evening we found that she had not stopped working. We emptied the glass, and left her.At seven o’clock in the morning of July twenty-ninth we paid her a visit, and could scarcely believe the testimony of our senses when we saw that the record was oneof unceasing toil through the long hours of the second night. We began to wonder if she would ever finish her task. Wonderful though she was, we had grown a little weary of our long session of watching. We had been glad that she worked through the first night; it was creditable to her and interesting to us, and we admired her even more for sticking to it through the second, but when it looked as though we might have to remain by her side through another long day, watching an endless series of loads as they were carried out, we confess that we thought she was rather overdoing it. Gradually, however, she slowed up her work, taking two or three minutes to make a journey down and up. At last, at just nine o’clock, her head appeared at the top of the stalk, and after a slight hesitation she flew away. The nest was completed.We have studied wasps for a number of years, and we feel that we are on terms of more or less intimacy with many of the species, but never before have we known one to work after day was done. We have often gone out with a lantern at bedtime for a tour of inspection among our nests, and have always found the inhabitants quiet and presumably asleep. The social wasps are very industrious, but during the hot nights of July they are to be seen clustered together on the outside of their papernests in deep repose; and although the Vespa wasps that nest in the ground sometimes come home late in the twilight, we have never seen them work after it was really dark. Polistes fusca may be said to share our cottage, so thickly does she hang her combs under the shelter of our porches, and from observations taken at all hours we know that she is quiet through the night. Sir John Lubbock, in “Ants, Bees, and Wasps,” speaks of the great industry of wasps. He has known them to work from early morning until dusk without any interval for rest or refreshment; but here was our little Crabro toiling from three in the afternoon of July twenty-seventh, through that night and the day and night following until nine o’clock on the morning of the twenty-ninth,—a period of forty-two consecutive hours with one intermission of ten minutes on the morning of the twenty-eighth. Surely she takes the palm for industry, not only from other wasps, but from the ant and the bee as well.ill113NEST OF C. STIRPICOLAThe nest was completed, but the work of storing it remained to be done. The wasp flew away at nine o’clock, and ten minutes later came back with something, we knew not what, for she dropped into her hole so quickly that she was out of sight almost before we knew she was there. Two minutes later she came up, and was off again. This time she was gone twelve minutes, and when she returned we were again baffled in our effort to see what she was carrying. When she came out she alighted upon a leaf and attended to her toilet, cleaning both body and wings by rubbing them off with her hind legs, and from this time on she never started on a hunting expedition without paying this attention to her personal appearance. On her third trip she was gone twenty minutes, coming back with a small fly; and before we left her at ten o’clock, she had stored six more. When we came back at half past two in the afternoon she was working, and she kept up her goings and comings until four o’clock, when she suspended operations for the day. On the next morning we were called away, and know nothing of what she did, but on the following day, Thursday, we resumed our observations. She worked hard all the morning, but in the afternoon her trips were few, and were made at long intervals. On Friday she worked from eight to nine, when she departed, and never returned. Wewatched for her, at intervals, all through that day and the next, when we were forced to conclude that our faithful little worker had fallen a victim to some bird or beast. We did not disturb the nest until four days later, when we cut the stalk, and examined it.We found that the tunnel was thirty-nine centimeters in length. This was a long distance for her to excavate, and, all things considered, her progress had been rapid. We have opened a number of stems that had been stored by this species, and all the excavations were from thirty to forty centimeters in length, the width of the gallery being about three and one half millimeters, while on each side there was from one to one and one half millimeters of pith that had not been cut away. Of course these points varied with the diameter of the stem and also with the size of the worker.Our little stirpicola had stored one cell, had laid an egg, and had built a partition of pith across the stem as a floor to the second cell, before her untimely taking off. Had she lived, ten or twelve cells would have been stored, one above the other. The completed cell contained a larva and parts of eighteen flies of different sizes, four species being represented. The flies had all been attacked by the larva, the abdomens of some and the thoraces of others having been eaten. The larva continued to eat for two days, and then spun its cocoon. The flies found in this and in other nests of stirpicola were all dead. All the pupæ that we kept wintered in the cocoon and came out in the spring.ill115AMMOPHILA SLEEPING IN THE GRASS (AFTER BANKS).The females of Crabro, like those of other genera, seem to use their galleries as sleeping places, but the males stop at any convenient inn. We once entertained one of them for several nights in a hole in one of the posts of our cottage porch. Other males, as in Philanthus, spend time and care in digging a hole in the ground, to which they return night after night. In Agenia the female keeps one cell ahead of her needs, and tucks herself away in it very comfortably; but the Pelopæi, instead of making this use of their tubes, congregate in the evening where there are convenient crevices, and make as much fuss about getting settled as a lot of English sparrows. Mr. Banks has made a delightfully pretty as well as interesting observation on the sleeping habits of Ammophila. In a corner of his garden where the grass grew long, dozens of these wasps arrived every evening, and after a good many changes in position, fell sound asleep, clinging to the stems about one third of the way down. They registered at this hotel between seven and eight o’clock, and departed before five in the morning. We have seen a Pompilus take the greatestcare in selecting a sheltered spot under some leaves, where she afterward hung herself up, and slept soundly until after eight the next day; and Mr. Brues has found companies of Priononyx atrata passing the night on the stems of sweet clover.

CRABRO

THE highest point of the island is crowned by a great group of linden trees; and one day their perfume, carried by the wind far over field and wood, was calling everything that had wings to gather the richest of all the gifts that July can offer. We, too, were drawn to the spot, and found the great blossoming domes thrilling and vibrating with life. For miles around, the bees, wasps, and butterflies had gathered to the feast; and we seemed to touch the high-tide of the year in the scent of the flowers, the humming throng of happy creatures, and the vision of it all against the summer sky.

Below, in a great root that had pushed above ground, five little wasps, by name sexmaculatus, of the worthy but unimaginative genus Crabro, resisting the intoxication of the linden flowers, were sawing and cutting in the most humdrum and practical manner. One of them, presumably the earliest riser, was well down in the root, and came backing up once in a while, pushinga lot of wood dust out of the hole. This was spread out by means of legs and mandibles, and was then blown away by the fanning wings of the little worker, who circled about just above the ground until the last grain had disappeared. Here was another way of protecting the home. The fresh dust might attract the attention of some cuckoo-like insect who would lay her egg within; and therefore it was dispersed, just as Ammophila carried out her pellet and flung it to a distance, and Sphex spread evenly over the ground the mass of earth that she carried from her hole.

After this series of actions had been repeated several times the wasp flew away to hunt. We afterward found that she had finished the third in a set of cells leading from a main gallery. On her return we delayed her to see what she was carrying. She showed no fear, but alighted close by, and while she was trying to transfer to the third pair of legs the fly that she was clasping with the second pair, it escaped and flew gayly away. Flies are plenty, however, and she soon had another which she was permitted to store; and from that time she worked busily until we left her at noon. It took her from two to ten minutes to catch her fly, and at each return two or three minutes were spent in the nest. On opening her tunnel some days later, we found within not only flies, but long-bodied gnats, and all of them seemed to have been brought home uninjured. When the freshest cell was opened some flew away, others were walking about, and all were lively. The wasp egg was laid on the under side of the neck; and although we could not be certain of the exact time of laying we thought it hatched at the end of thirty-six hours. From ten to sixteen flies were provided for each larva.

ill99

SEXMACULATUS IN THE LINDEN ROOTS

SEXMACULATUS IN THE LINDEN ROOTS

SEXMACULATUS IN THE LINDEN ROOTS

A month later we found Crabro lentus nesting in the ground. Her tunnel ran down obliquely for six and one half centimeters, and had an enlargement at the end. Two bugs and a fly were in the nest, when we opened it before the provision was completed. To find sexmaculatus taking both flies and gnats was surprising, so rigid are the family traditions of the wasps; still, she might feel that so long as she drew the line at Diptera she was all right. But to believe that one wasp, a Crabro, too, with all the marks of conservatism about her, would take such diverse things as bugs and flies, is almost too much to believe. It is true that Crabro wesmæli is said to use both flies and bugs;[4]but some accident may have led to this supposition, and stronger evidence is needed to prove that there is variability in so deeply seated an instinct.

ill103

CRABRO AND HER WHITE MOTHS

CRABRO AND HER WHITE MOTHS

CRABRO AND HER WHITE MOTHS

.

The Crabro wasps all have pleasant ideas as to where they want to live, but interruptus excels in the choice of a dwelling place. We lately found ten or twelve of them in Milwaukee, nesting in an old log on the shore of Lake Michigan, and when they opened their doors in the morning they had before them the splendor of the great bay; but calm in the midst of the glory they never paused on the threshold, as Cerceris would have done, to take a look at the world before going to work. One morning the earliest riser in our little colony was beginning the day at half past nine. Of good size for a Crabro, with a square determined-looking head and very direct and business-like manners, she proceeded to cut out a new chamber for provisioning. These chambers are nothing more than enlargements of the long gallery, such as are made in stems by related species. At ten o’clock she departed on a hunting excursion among the bushes on the bank above us, and came back in eight minutes, carrying, much to our surprise, a white-winged moth, which was clasped under the body by the second and third pairs of legs, and was passed back to the third pair as she alighted before entering. A moth is an innovation, a delicacy new to the accepted idea of what a Crabro larder, accustomed to Diptera, should contain. A moment later she was off again, but this time did not succeed so quickly, coming back twice empty-handed for brief visits, and bringing in a load at the end of half an hour. It took six moths to provision the cell, and as the number neared completion her interest and energy seemed to wax greater, the hunting intervals shortening to five, and even to two minutes. We found afterwards that some of the moths were alive and some dead, and that she packed them lengthwise, one after another, into the closely fitting chamber. At a little before eleven o’clock the cell was filled, and the wasp retired from sight, closing the door behind her. We thought that she was resting, but presently the protrusion of wood dust showed that she was enlarging her house, and an hour later she came out and began to hunt again. By this time half a dozen were working. Before leaving for the first time in the morning each one made a thorough study of the place, and on returning they entered their own doors, which were standing open, without hesitation, the long white wings of the moths trailing behind them. Four species were represented in the nests that we opened.ill106

CRABRO STIRPICOLA

CRABRO STIRPICOLA

CRABRO STIRPICOLA

Many species of Crabro make their nests in the stems of plants, and among these is stirpicola, which is seen in numbers, through the middle of July, flying about in a leisurely way, though it is only toward the end of the month, or in the early days of August, that they settle down to the work of making their homes. On the afternoon of July twenty-seventh, after some very lively work in the heat of the day, we walked down to the berry garden at half past five o’clock, rather to rest ourselves than with the thought of undertaking anything new; but a wasp-hunter cannot afford to choose his own hours, and we thankfully accepted the sending of fortune when we came upon a stirpicola busy at work in digging out her nest. She had only begun to excavate, and had reached a length just equal to that of her own body. Her manners were an agreeable contrast to those of the wasps that we had been watching through the day. The feverish excitement of their ways seemed quite in keeping with the burning heat of noon, while Crabro’s slow and gentle movements harmonized perfectly with the long shadows of evening. To fully appreciate the difference between Pompilus or Ammophila and Crabro it is necessary to see them at work. The one is the embodiment of all that is restless, vying with the humming-birds in swiftness and energy, whilethe other is calm, quiet, and stately in all that she does.ill-107

BOTTLE ON STEM TO MEASURE WORK OF CRABRO

BOTTLE ON STEM TO MEASURE WORK OF CRABRO

BOTTLE ON STEM TO MEASURE WORK OF CRABRO

Some ten feet away was a second stirpicola, and this one, to judge from the depth to which she had penetrated, must have been at work for about two hours. We watched them both, and saw them bring up load after load of pith. They bit out the pellets with their mandibles, and passed them back between the legs and under the body until a quantity had accumulated above the tip of the abdomen. They then walked backward up the stem, and thus pushed out the mass as they came to the top. Often they used the hind legs to assist in getting it out of the way, sometimes kicking it to a little distance. Once in every two or three trips they would come out far enough to expose part of the thorax. They appeared and disappeared with the regularity of a machine, never stopping to rest.

We remained with them until seven o’clock, when we placed a long bottle over each stem in such a way that while it did not interfere with the work of the wasp, it caught the chips of pith as theyfell out. At the end of an hour we noted the amount of accumulation in the tube, and thus had a measure of their rate of work. The drawing gives an idea of the arrangement of the tube on the stem. When we left them they were still digging and delving.

At half past nine we took a lantern and went down to visit our charges. We expected to find them at rest, and asleep; but on the contrary they were working as busily as ever, and upon examining the measuring glasses we found that they had not paused since we left them. We measured the depth of the débris in the bottles, and then emptied them.

At four o’clock on the next morning we went to the garden, and were much surprised to find that the two wasps had worked without intermission throughout the night. Indeed they seemed to have shortened a little the time that it took to make a round trip down the gallery and up to the opening again, since there was more pith in the bottles than we could have expected if they had worked at only their former rate. Neither the coolness of the air nor the darkness of the night had made the slightest difference to them. After watching them a few minutes, and marveling at their powers of endurance, we cleared out the tubes and returned to bed. At half past eight we found them stillat work. Unlike us, they had taken no morning nap, but had gone on with their tunneling in their usual steady way.

From this time their ways diverged, and they must be described separately. At nine o’clock the one that we had first seen came up to the opening, walking head first, and flew off, remaining away seven minutes. When she returned she at once resumed her work, and kept at it without a pause until two in the afternoon. At this hour she went away, and we never saw her again. We suppose that she was killed, for it seems improbable that so faithful a creature could have deserted her half-finished home. Pompilus quinquenotatus often deserted a partly finished nest for some more enticing spot, and Sphex started several excavations before making a final choice; but we cannot believe that there was anything fickle about Crabro.

The second wasp came up head first to the entrance of her hole at two minutes after nine, as though she had been influenced, in some subtle way, by her neighbor’s example; but after looking about for a moment she went back. She repeated this observation several times, and finally, at twenty-five minutes after nine, came out and flew to a leaf near by. Then she circled around, alighting a number of times, and at lastdeparted. Her stay was brief, for at just thirty-five minutes after nine she returned, and at once settled down to her work.

We now began to make notes as to the length of time that it took her to go down and bring back her load. We timed her again and again, and found that she was remarkably regular, each of her trips occupying from forty-five to fifty seconds.

All that day we kept her under strict surveillance, and never once did she suspend her operations either for rest or refreshment. Late in the afternoon, while we sat watching her as she appeared and disappeared with almost the regularity of clockwork, we found it difficult to realize that the patient little creature had been at work for more than twenty-four hours, with only one brief intermission. Without hurry or flurry she kept at her task, reminding us, in her business-like ways, of the social wasps of the genus Vespa. When we left her, at dusk, we attached the recording tube to the stem, and at ten o’clock in the evening we found that she had not stopped working. We emptied the glass, and left her.

At seven o’clock in the morning of July twenty-ninth we paid her a visit, and could scarcely believe the testimony of our senses when we saw that the record was oneof unceasing toil through the long hours of the second night. We began to wonder if she would ever finish her task. Wonderful though she was, we had grown a little weary of our long session of watching. We had been glad that she worked through the first night; it was creditable to her and interesting to us, and we admired her even more for sticking to it through the second, but when it looked as though we might have to remain by her side through another long day, watching an endless series of loads as they were carried out, we confess that we thought she was rather overdoing it. Gradually, however, she slowed up her work, taking two or three minutes to make a journey down and up. At last, at just nine o’clock, her head appeared at the top of the stalk, and after a slight hesitation she flew away. The nest was completed.

We have studied wasps for a number of years, and we feel that we are on terms of more or less intimacy with many of the species, but never before have we known one to work after day was done. We have often gone out with a lantern at bedtime for a tour of inspection among our nests, and have always found the inhabitants quiet and presumably asleep. The social wasps are very industrious, but during the hot nights of July they are to be seen clustered together on the outside of their papernests in deep repose; and although the Vespa wasps that nest in the ground sometimes come home late in the twilight, we have never seen them work after it was really dark. Polistes fusca may be said to share our cottage, so thickly does she hang her combs under the shelter of our porches, and from observations taken at all hours we know that she is quiet through the night. Sir John Lubbock, in “Ants, Bees, and Wasps,” speaks of the great industry of wasps. He has known them to work from early morning until dusk without any interval for rest or refreshment; but here was our little Crabro toiling from three in the afternoon of July twenty-seventh, through that night and the day and night following until nine o’clock on the morning of the twenty-ninth,—a period of forty-two consecutive hours with one intermission of ten minutes on the morning of the twenty-eighth. Surely she takes the palm for industry, not only from other wasps, but from the ant and the bee as well.ill113

NEST OF C. STIRPICOLA

NEST OF C. STIRPICOLA

NEST OF C. STIRPICOLA

The nest was completed, but the work of storing it remained to be done. The wasp flew away at nine o’clock, and ten minutes later came back with something, we knew not what, for she dropped into her hole so quickly that she was out of sight almost before we knew she was there. Two minutes later she came up, and was off again. This time she was gone twelve minutes, and when she returned we were again baffled in our effort to see what she was carrying. When she came out she alighted upon a leaf and attended to her toilet, cleaning both body and wings by rubbing them off with her hind legs, and from this time on she never started on a hunting expedition without paying this attention to her personal appearance. On her third trip she was gone twenty minutes, coming back with a small fly; and before we left her at ten o’clock, she had stored six more. When we came back at half past two in the afternoon she was working, and she kept up her goings and comings until four o’clock, when she suspended operations for the day. On the next morning we were called away, and know nothing of what she did, but on the following day, Thursday, we resumed our observations. She worked hard all the morning, but in the afternoon her trips were few, and were made at long intervals. On Friday she worked from eight to nine, when she departed, and never returned. Wewatched for her, at intervals, all through that day and the next, when we were forced to conclude that our faithful little worker had fallen a victim to some bird or beast. We did not disturb the nest until four days later, when we cut the stalk, and examined it.

We found that the tunnel was thirty-nine centimeters in length. This was a long distance for her to excavate, and, all things considered, her progress had been rapid. We have opened a number of stems that had been stored by this species, and all the excavations were from thirty to forty centimeters in length, the width of the gallery being about three and one half millimeters, while on each side there was from one to one and one half millimeters of pith that had not been cut away. Of course these points varied with the diameter of the stem and also with the size of the worker.

Our little stirpicola had stored one cell, had laid an egg, and had built a partition of pith across the stem as a floor to the second cell, before her untimely taking off. Had she lived, ten or twelve cells would have been stored, one above the other. The completed cell contained a larva and parts of eighteen flies of different sizes, four species being represented. The flies had all been attacked by the larva, the abdomens of some and the thoraces of others having been eaten. The larva continued to eat for two days, and then spun its cocoon. The flies found in this and in other nests of stirpicola were all dead. All the pupæ that we kept wintered in the cocoon and came out in the spring.

ill115

AMMOPHILA SLEEPING IN THE GRASS (AFTER BANKS)

AMMOPHILA SLEEPING IN THE GRASS (AFTER BANKS)

AMMOPHILA SLEEPING IN THE GRASS (AFTER BANKS)

.

The females of Crabro, like those of other genera, seem to use their galleries as sleeping places, but the males stop at any convenient inn. We once entertained one of them for several nights in a hole in one of the posts of our cottage porch. Other males, as in Philanthus, spend time and care in digging a hole in the ground, to which they return night after night. In Agenia the female keeps one cell ahead of her needs, and tucks herself away in it very comfortably; but the Pelopæi, instead of making this use of their tubes, congregate in the evening where there are convenient crevices, and make as much fuss about getting settled as a lot of English sparrows. Mr. Banks has made a delightfully pretty as well as interesting observation on the sleeping habits of Ammophila. In a corner of his garden where the grass grew long, dozens of these wasps arrived every evening, and after a good many changes in position, fell sound asleep, clinging to the stems about one third of the way down. They registered at this hotel between seven and eight o’clock, and departed before five in the morning. We have seen a Pompilus take the greatestcare in selecting a sheltered spot under some leaves, where she afterward hung herself up, and slept soundly until after eight the next day; and Mr. Brues has found companies of Priononyx atrata passing the night on the stems of sweet clover.

Chapter VIAN ISLAND SETTLEMENTOUR children often made themselves useful by reporting finds in the shape of nests, and one day they returned from the island with a wonderful tale of great numbers of big wasps that were digging in the ground. “I don’t know what they are,” said the small boy, “but they act to me like the maddest kind of hornets.” With this attractive picture before us, we lost no time in going over to the spot, where we found a thriving colony of Bembex spinolæ. On our approach they fell upon us, “desire of blood, and rage, and lust of fight” in their mien, and chased us to a distance, but without inflicting a single wound. This temperance was not due to gentleness of disposition, but to the fact that Bembex is not at all handy with her sting, her body being too large and clumsy to curve and give the lightning stab as other wasps do. With renewed courage we again approached them, more cautiously this time, and soon learned that if we preserved an extremely composed and dignified demeanor our presence on the field would be tolerated.Bembex, like Philanthus, and some species of Sphex, lives in a sort of semi-social state, a number of individuals occupying the same space of ground, although each one has its separate nest. Bembex, however, differs from these genera and from almost all of the solitary wasps in her habit of feeding her young from day to day, or rather from hour to hour, as long as it remains in the larval state. This difference in her maternal cares as compared with those of other species results in a less numerous progeny. The larva, for a period of two weeks, demands constant attention from the mother, so that a second egg cannot be laid until the first-born has gone into its cocoon, unless, indeed, she feeds two larvæ at once, which does not seem probable. The season of work is ten or twelve weeks, so that Wesenberg is probably correct in allowing only five or six young ones to each mother for the summer.In watching our wasps we found that the new nests were usually made in the outskirts of the colony, which was thus continually extending its limits. Like many other species, Bembex has great difficulty in deciding just where to dig. Our Sphex made three beginnings before finally settling down. The only Ammophila that we watched from the beginning changed her place after working for ten minutes. P. quinquenotatus often triedhalf a dozen places before she was satisfied, and spinolæ is quite as difficult to please.When, at last, the right place is found, the labor of excavation is carried on vigorously. The mandibles are used for loosening the earth, and for lifting, but the greater part of the work is done with the first pair of legs, the tarsi of which are doubled up while the dirt is swept out with the brush of stiff spiny hairs on the second joint. This attitude gives them a very comical aspect, making them look as if they were sweeping with their elbows. They sometimes lie far over to one side while loosening the earth with their mandibles. While digging, the body is held high by the straightening of the third pair of legs, and the dirt comes out behind in a rapid stream, flying to a distance of three or four inches. Before long the wasp is lost to sight, but every few moments she comes backing out, pushing behind her the dirt that she has displaced below. In about fifteen minutes the nest is ready, and the wasp turns her attention to scattering all the dirt that has been thrown out, sweeping the ground clean so that no sign of her work remains. We have often speculated as to the meaning of the careful and conscientious performance of this part of her task. With the wasps that nest by themselves it is not easy to see what enemy they are providing against in hiding theentrance to the nest; but the precaution seems still less necessary—even absurd—in the Bembex field, where there is no possibility of concealing the colony, and where the nests are only an inch or two apart, so that an enemy might burrow anywhere with the certainty of finding one. Moreover, the only enemy that we could discover was the parasitic fly, which never attempts to enter when the hole is closed. However, unmoved by our opinion on the subject, spinolæ spends five or six minutes of her precious time in making the neighborhood of her home quite tidy, and then she fills in the mouth of the nest with a little loose earth before going away to catch her fly.Oxybelus, though she is limited in choice by her small size, can catch a fly in three or four minutes. Bembex is strong enough to take anything that she sees, and she has no preference for one species above another, yet she seldom finds one under twenty or twenty-five minutes. When she comes back nothing of the fly is visible unless it is unusually large, so closely is it held under her body by the second pair of legs. She alights, and scratches away the loose earth at the entrance of the nest with her first legs, and then, as she creeps within, she passes the fly along from the second to the third pair, so that the end of its body, projecting beyond the abdomen of thewasp, is visible for an instant before it is carried inside. Sometimes she drops the fly behind her, and then, turning around, pulls it in with her mandibles. In other cases, where a longer portion of the tunnel has been filled with earth, the fly is left lying on the ground while the wasp clears the way. This offers a favorable opportunity to parasites, especially as the fly is not placed with regard to its safety, but is dropped anywhere. The dirt that is kicked out sometimes covers it so that when the way is clear the careless proprietor must search it out and clean it off before she can store it away. In one instance, in which we had been opening a nest close by, the tunnel was entirely blocked by the loose earth which we had disturbed, and the wasp worked for ten minutes before she cleared a way to her nest. During part of this time she held the fly, but when she realized that it was going to be a long piece of work she laid it down near by. As the wasp enters she sometimes leaves the hole open behind her, but oftener fills it by pushing up earth from below. When she comes out again she throws in a little dirt, and then begins to circle about the place. She seems not quite easy about the nest, however, returning three or four times to scratch earth over the entrance, before finally taking her departure.We opened a good many nests in the course of thesummer, and found them all very much alike, much more so than is the case with other species. The entrance tunnel runs in obliquely for from three to five inches below the surface of the ground, and ends in a pocket.We grow accustomed to marvels, and from our familiarity with other wasps we take as a matter of course the unerring accuracy with which Bembex swoops down upon the exact spot at which the entrance to her nest is hidden. And yet how strange a power it is! There is not the least sign to help her—not a stone, not a blade of grass is to be seen on the field. Our method of marking a nest which we wished to find again was to place tiny pebbles at exactly equal distances from it, one on either side, so that the middle point of the straight line between them gave us the desired spot; and the wasp doubtless uses the same method, only her landmarks are sometimes so infinitesimal that we do not recognize them.Bouvier finds that when he cuts away the plants around the nest of B. labiatus, clearing a space of twenty-eight or thirty inches square, the wasp is much confused, flying about for a long time before she is able to find her home. He once placed a flat stone over the entrance. The wasp alighted upon it, and after scratching vainly for a while made her way in. The stone wasleft in this position for two days, during which time Bembex learned to regard it as a landmark, for upon its being removed to a distance of eight inches she still followed it upon returning with her fly, and insisted upon finding her nest near it.ill125NEST OF BEMBEXAn observation of Marchand points to the same conclusion. He says:—On July seventeenth, 1900, during a short sojourn at Pouliguen, on returning from a hunt after Diptera and Hymenoptera in the cliffs of Caudan, about eleven in the morning, in tropical heat, I paused to take breath near the old mill of Caudan and looked about for a little shadebefore continuing my walk to Pen-Château. I had seated myself on the stones of a slope shaded from the sun and was wiping the perspiration from my forehead, when I saw a large wasp arrive directly before me. I instinctively followed it with my eyes; it paused some yards from the mill on the side of the cliff, and began to open a nest which was placed scarcely twenty inches from the foot of a swallow-wort, a rather common plant in the neighborhood of the ruin. She was Bembex rostrata at work at provisioning her nest.Moved by curiosity, instead of going on to breakfast, I awaited the exit from the nest, which took place in about five minutes. Bembex scratched the sand and took flight from the side of the cliff. How long would she be away? I looked at my watch and arose.Ought I to go or to wait a little while? I took the latter decision. Out of malice, and without any idea of trying a control experiment to the admirable observations which science owes to the naturalist of Sérignan, of whom I was not thinking at all, I cut close to the sand the stalk of the swallow-wort and planted it a little nearer the mill, moving it about two feet, and being careful to put in place of the plant a little fragment of a bottle which I found in the mill. I seated myself in the shade and waited. Twenty minutes later the wasp dropped straight on to the place where I had cut the plant, that is to say, it deviated from its nest by a distance about equal to the displacement to which I had subjected the swallow-wort. It walked right and left, agitating its antennæ, appearing confused as to the locality.I followed these goings and comings for two or three minutes. Several times it flew away and then returned, always searching about. Pitying it and desiring, since I was now relieved of the fatigue which the heat had caused me, to go back to breakfast, I took my net and drawing near, made as if to catch it, swinging the pocket rapidly about. It veered away with a quick jerk of the wings. I then took up the swallow-wort, lifting the fragment which marked its original place, and replanted it in the sand.I again looked at my watch to see whether I could consecrate yet a few more minutes to curiosity without making my kind host, my friend Dr. MceRivron, and his wife, who honored me with the charming hospitality of Kursac, wait too long. It was only half past eleven; we usually did not breakfast until about noon; it would take only a quarter of an hour to traverse the distance from the mill of Caudan to the house. I could then, without fear of being chided, dispose of fifteen minutes. This lapse of time would perhaps suffice to show me whether mybestiolewould this time find the way to her nest without hesitation.I waited a little; five minutes had not passed when my Bembex, coming like an arrow, alighted on the sand near the plant, still holding the prey which I had noticed when she departed at my chasing her, after her vain attempts to find the entrance to her nest; but this time she did not hunt long. She felt about a little to right and left, but soon turned directly toward the entrance to the tunnel, distant scarcely two inches from the place where she had settled. My Bembex had a memory.A curious thing about these wasps, and one which shows how much common feeling they have, is that they work in waves, all starting off on their hunting expeditions within a few minutes of each other, and returning together after the chase. At one time all the residents seem to be present, digging their nests, carrying in their booty, dashing at each other, and chasing the parasites with a tremendous amount of humming and swooping about. Then suddenly they are all gone. Nothing remains but multitudes of flies, which keep up a giddy dance over the field, and for ten or fifteen minutes the place seems deserted. Then the wasps begin to return, several coming at a time, and as if by magic the whole scene awakens to life. More than half of the wasps bring nothing home with them, and these fall to robbing their more fortunate companions. Those that are carrying flies must pause a moment, burdened as they are, to scratch away the earth at the entrance to the nest. When unmolested they go in very quickly, but it is just at this point that the marauders fall upon them, displaying an amount of persistence and energy in their attacks that, were it properly directed, might easily enable them to secure flies for themselves.We once saw a wasp that had been fortunate enough, or perhaps unfortunate enough, to catch an immensefly, the wings of which stood out on both sides very conspicuously. This made her an especial mark for her unprincipled relatives. Half a dozen of them chased her about, like chickens pursuing one of their number that has found a worm. She circled and settled, and circled and swooped around for five or six minutes, continually pursued and attacked by the robbers, and quite unable to get into her nest. At last, curious to see what she was carrying, we made her drop her load, and secured it for ourselves. We found it to be a horse fly, quite dead, but showing no marks of violence. It was not wasted, for we afterward fed it to one of our wasp nurslings at home.At another time we saw one wasp attack another that was bringing in a fly. In the struggle that ensued the owner lost her booty, as the two rolled over and over on the ground, and as they parted it was seized by the thief. They clinched again, and rolled on the ground as before, and this time the fly was recovered by the rightful owner. At this point, thinking that perhaps one of the wasps was a male, and that this might be their style of courtship, we seized both of them; whereupon the fly was dropped, and the two wasps turned their attention to attacking us. Both proved to be females. Not only do the Bembecids fight in this way for the possession of their prey—they quarrel even without apparent cause.We have seen two females digging their nests at a little distance apart, one of which was repeatedly attacked by the other, although she did nothing to provoke the aggressor. They are certainly very unneighborly, and have no idea of living in harmony. When flying in a threatening manner, either at us or at each other, they have a way of wagging their abdomens violently from side to side in a way well calculated to inspire terror.In warm sunny weather spinolæ works industriously through the middle of the day, and seems determined to provide abundantly, not only for her own offspring, but for any unbidden guests that it may be her fate to care for. She never works more than four or five hours a day, however, and in unfavorable weather she does not work at all. On going over to the island one cloudy morning to spend some hours in watching the Bembex activities, we found the spot quiet and lifeless. No one seeing it for the first time would have dreamed of the multitudes of living creatures beneath his feet. The nests seemed to be all closed, but on peering curiously about we found one on sloping ground, in the suburbs of the colony, of which the door was open. Just within was the proprietor gazing out on the landscape, as she is shown in the illustration. She seemed to be leaning on her elbows, and her face, enlivened by two great goggle eyes, had anirresistibly comical aspect. With the exception of the omnipresent flies, this wasp was the only sign of life about the place. Even in good weather, and in working hours, the wasps sometimes rest, for we have seen them go in empty-handed, closing the door behind them, to remain for half an hour at a time.ill131BEMBEX SPINOLÆ LOOKING OUT OF NESTThere is one thought that must strike even a casual observer at the sight of the hordes of parasites that hover over a Bembex colony:—“The buzzing flies, a persevering train,Incessant swarm, and chased return again.”Why do not these wasps, fly-catchers as they are by profession, kill the worthless wretches that infest their homes, thriving abundantly on the fruits of their labor, a continual menace to the life and safety of their offspring? To the uninitiated it would seem that these flies might serve as food for the wasp larvæ quite as well as any of the dozen species that they actually take; but even if the wasp-mother believes that they possess indigestible qualities, it would be much less trouble to kill them and throw them away than to be perpetually chasing them to a little distance only to see them return as soon as she gives her attention to anything else. Whatever the reason for it may be, the relation between the wasps and the flies is certainly most curious and puzzling. Fabre’s explanation is that since this miserable little fly has its own part to play in nature, Bembex must respect it, thus preserving harmony in the world of living things. The idea is perfectly in accord with his own theories, but we find ourselves quite unable to accept it.There can be no doubt that the parasites are a grave danger to Bembex. She suffers from them far more than any other wasp that we are familiar with, her mode of feeding the young rendering her peculiarly susceptibleto their attacks. Of the ten or twelve nests that we opened only one was free from them, the others containing from two to five lively maggots nearly as large as the wasp larvæ, which were sharing the food brought in by the mother. Fabre, who has studied the question thoroughly, has found as many as ten parasitic larvæ in one nest. He has also noticed that where the parasites are most numerous the wasp-larva is proportionately small and emaciated, reaching only one half or one third of its normal size. When it attempts to spin its cocoon it has not strength enough to do so, and thus perishes miserably among the pupæ of the interlopers, which have the advantage of developing more rapidly. He has proved, by experiments upon nests transported to his study, that although the invaders preserve friendly relations with the rightful owner of the nest so long as food is abundant, they nevertheless, at the first suggestion of scarcity, fall upon the wasp larva and ruthlessly devour it. This “black action” he has seen with his own eyes. In view of this base ingratitude, we are more than ever impressed with the troubles of the poor Bembex mother, as she tries to feed a dozen mouths where she has bargained for only one.We several times saw a fly follow a wasp into her nest, remaining within for half a minute, and it is probablethat they go in to lay their eggs. According to Fabre, it is the habit of the flies that are parasitic upon the half-dozen species of Bembex that he has studied to seize the moment at which the fly projects from under the abdomen of the wasp as she enters the nest; and he has even known them to lay two or three eggs on one fly in the instant of time that its body was exposed.Fabre took a partly grown Bembex larva from the nest, where it was surrounded by the remains of twenty flies. He fed it generously, and it ate sixty-two more, making a total of eighty-two in the eight days that passed before the spinning of the cocoon. Our experiments in this line gave similar results. We took charge of a partly grown larva on the afternoon of August tenth, and between that date and August fifteenth, when it spun its cocoon, it ate forty-two house flies besides a big Tabanus.Fabre thinks that under natural conditions the mother does not give the larva all it can eat at one time, but provides it with what she considers a reasonable amount of food, and keeps anything that she catches beyond this out of its reach. He draws his conclusion from the fact that he has found several flies in the tunnel leading to the nest, while the larva had as many more close to it. It would certainly be convenient for Bembex to have areserve of this kind in case of rainy weather, but the forethought implied in such an action seems to require a higher degree of intelligence than can be claimed for her.In one nest we found a single fly with a long cylindrical egg attached to the left side of the thorax just at the origin of the third leg. In another, which we had seen made and provisioned, we found, six days later, a larva which we judged to be four days old. Assuming that the egg was laid on the first day, it must have taken it about two days to hatch. Other nests gave us larvæ in all stages of development, surrounded by the remains of Diptera, among which Syrphus, Tabanus, and Musca were represented.In regard to the condition of the flies captured by Bembex, we have never seen the crushing of the thorax, which is noted by both Wesenberg and Fabre. Indeed, the flies that we found were not always dead, since in two instances they responded readily to stimulation. Similar results have been obtained by Mr. S. W. Dunning of Hartford, Connecticut.Twice we have seen our spinolæ, as she was bringing home her prey, alight near the nest and sting it as it was held with the second pair of legs. We could see the process distinctly, since she is slow and clumsy, and, in oneinstance, had difficulty in reaching the fly, falling over to one side in an awkward manner. It is probable, then, that this is a habit with the wasp, but that the sting is usually given at the place of capture.We opened a number of Bembex nests, but succeeded in raising only one larva, which we took when it was half grown. This one, during the five days that passed before it spun the cocoon, ate forty-three flies.Mr. Bates has some notes on Monedula signata, which takes nothing but flies, and even confines itself to a single species, although it must sometimes go half a mile away to find it. This reminds us of Pompilus quinquenotatus, which never takes anything but Epeira strix.ill136BEMBEXA considerable contribution to our knowledge of the genus Bembex has been made in the paper by Wesenberg (written in Danish) which has already been referred to. This paper deals with Bembex rostrata. It was translated for Mr. Ashmead by Mr. Martin Linell.ill137A CORNER OF THE BEMBEX COLONY.It seems that rostrata makes its nest in solid sand, covering it up with loose sand, and usually, also, with a little flat stone, to prevent parasites from entering. The cell measures one cubic inch, the entrance tunnel being one and one half centimeters long, and arcuate. A cell contains four or five fresh flies (Lucilia, Eristalis, etc.), and torn-off wings, sucked-out thoraces, and in the middle of these, a big flat larva.When the larva is hatched the mother brings more and more flies, the flies being larger and larger as it grows. This adjustment of the size of the fly to the growth of the larva has also been noted by Fabre.Wesenberg says that fifty Bembecids will nest on a spot as big as a room during a period of three months. The time required for the development of the larva is two weeks, this giving five or six young ones for the season. He queries, “Does each female have more than one nest? and if so, how can she remember them?” To determine this point we marked six wasps by touching them with differently colored paints, putting near their nests pebbles painted to correspond with the owners, and then watched them closely for three hours.During this time the red wasp returned regularly to the red nest, the blue to the blue, and so on. They were watched for an hour and a half on the following day with the same result, so that it seems quite certain that spinolæ has only one nest at a time. To feed two larvæ at once, with interlopers thrown in, would be a heavier task than the most determined industry could accomplish.

AN ISLAND SETTLEMENT

OUR children often made themselves useful by reporting finds in the shape of nests, and one day they returned from the island with a wonderful tale of great numbers of big wasps that were digging in the ground. “I don’t know what they are,” said the small boy, “but they act to me like the maddest kind of hornets.” With this attractive picture before us, we lost no time in going over to the spot, where we found a thriving colony of Bembex spinolæ. On our approach they fell upon us, “desire of blood, and rage, and lust of fight” in their mien, and chased us to a distance, but without inflicting a single wound. This temperance was not due to gentleness of disposition, but to the fact that Bembex is not at all handy with her sting, her body being too large and clumsy to curve and give the lightning stab as other wasps do. With renewed courage we again approached them, more cautiously this time, and soon learned that if we preserved an extremely composed and dignified demeanor our presence on the field would be tolerated.

Bembex, like Philanthus, and some species of Sphex, lives in a sort of semi-social state, a number of individuals occupying the same space of ground, although each one has its separate nest. Bembex, however, differs from these genera and from almost all of the solitary wasps in her habit of feeding her young from day to day, or rather from hour to hour, as long as it remains in the larval state. This difference in her maternal cares as compared with those of other species results in a less numerous progeny. The larva, for a period of two weeks, demands constant attention from the mother, so that a second egg cannot be laid until the first-born has gone into its cocoon, unless, indeed, she feeds two larvæ at once, which does not seem probable. The season of work is ten or twelve weeks, so that Wesenberg is probably correct in allowing only five or six young ones to each mother for the summer.

In watching our wasps we found that the new nests were usually made in the outskirts of the colony, which was thus continually extending its limits. Like many other species, Bembex has great difficulty in deciding just where to dig. Our Sphex made three beginnings before finally settling down. The only Ammophila that we watched from the beginning changed her place after working for ten minutes. P. quinquenotatus often triedhalf a dozen places before she was satisfied, and spinolæ is quite as difficult to please.

When, at last, the right place is found, the labor of excavation is carried on vigorously. The mandibles are used for loosening the earth, and for lifting, but the greater part of the work is done with the first pair of legs, the tarsi of which are doubled up while the dirt is swept out with the brush of stiff spiny hairs on the second joint. This attitude gives them a very comical aspect, making them look as if they were sweeping with their elbows. They sometimes lie far over to one side while loosening the earth with their mandibles. While digging, the body is held high by the straightening of the third pair of legs, and the dirt comes out behind in a rapid stream, flying to a distance of three or four inches. Before long the wasp is lost to sight, but every few moments she comes backing out, pushing behind her the dirt that she has displaced below. In about fifteen minutes the nest is ready, and the wasp turns her attention to scattering all the dirt that has been thrown out, sweeping the ground clean so that no sign of her work remains. We have often speculated as to the meaning of the careful and conscientious performance of this part of her task. With the wasps that nest by themselves it is not easy to see what enemy they are providing against in hiding theentrance to the nest; but the precaution seems still less necessary—even absurd—in the Bembex field, where there is no possibility of concealing the colony, and where the nests are only an inch or two apart, so that an enemy might burrow anywhere with the certainty of finding one. Moreover, the only enemy that we could discover was the parasitic fly, which never attempts to enter when the hole is closed. However, unmoved by our opinion on the subject, spinolæ spends five or six minutes of her precious time in making the neighborhood of her home quite tidy, and then she fills in the mouth of the nest with a little loose earth before going away to catch her fly.

Oxybelus, though she is limited in choice by her small size, can catch a fly in three or four minutes. Bembex is strong enough to take anything that she sees, and she has no preference for one species above another, yet she seldom finds one under twenty or twenty-five minutes. When she comes back nothing of the fly is visible unless it is unusually large, so closely is it held under her body by the second pair of legs. She alights, and scratches away the loose earth at the entrance of the nest with her first legs, and then, as she creeps within, she passes the fly along from the second to the third pair, so that the end of its body, projecting beyond the abdomen of thewasp, is visible for an instant before it is carried inside. Sometimes she drops the fly behind her, and then, turning around, pulls it in with her mandibles. In other cases, where a longer portion of the tunnel has been filled with earth, the fly is left lying on the ground while the wasp clears the way. This offers a favorable opportunity to parasites, especially as the fly is not placed with regard to its safety, but is dropped anywhere. The dirt that is kicked out sometimes covers it so that when the way is clear the careless proprietor must search it out and clean it off before she can store it away. In one instance, in which we had been opening a nest close by, the tunnel was entirely blocked by the loose earth which we had disturbed, and the wasp worked for ten minutes before she cleared a way to her nest. During part of this time she held the fly, but when she realized that it was going to be a long piece of work she laid it down near by. As the wasp enters she sometimes leaves the hole open behind her, but oftener fills it by pushing up earth from below. When she comes out again she throws in a little dirt, and then begins to circle about the place. She seems not quite easy about the nest, however, returning three or four times to scratch earth over the entrance, before finally taking her departure.

We opened a good many nests in the course of thesummer, and found them all very much alike, much more so than is the case with other species. The entrance tunnel runs in obliquely for from three to five inches below the surface of the ground, and ends in a pocket.

We grow accustomed to marvels, and from our familiarity with other wasps we take as a matter of course the unerring accuracy with which Bembex swoops down upon the exact spot at which the entrance to her nest is hidden. And yet how strange a power it is! There is not the least sign to help her—not a stone, not a blade of grass is to be seen on the field. Our method of marking a nest which we wished to find again was to place tiny pebbles at exactly equal distances from it, one on either side, so that the middle point of the straight line between them gave us the desired spot; and the wasp doubtless uses the same method, only her landmarks are sometimes so infinitesimal that we do not recognize them.

Bouvier finds that when he cuts away the plants around the nest of B. labiatus, clearing a space of twenty-eight or thirty inches square, the wasp is much confused, flying about for a long time before she is able to find her home. He once placed a flat stone over the entrance. The wasp alighted upon it, and after scratching vainly for a while made her way in. The stone wasleft in this position for two days, during which time Bembex learned to regard it as a landmark, for upon its being removed to a distance of eight inches she still followed it upon returning with her fly, and insisted upon finding her nest near it.

ill125

NEST OF BEMBEX

NEST OF BEMBEX

NEST OF BEMBEX

An observation of Marchand points to the same conclusion. He says:—

On July seventeenth, 1900, during a short sojourn at Pouliguen, on returning from a hunt after Diptera and Hymenoptera in the cliffs of Caudan, about eleven in the morning, in tropical heat, I paused to take breath near the old mill of Caudan and looked about for a little shadebefore continuing my walk to Pen-Château. I had seated myself on the stones of a slope shaded from the sun and was wiping the perspiration from my forehead, when I saw a large wasp arrive directly before me. I instinctively followed it with my eyes; it paused some yards from the mill on the side of the cliff, and began to open a nest which was placed scarcely twenty inches from the foot of a swallow-wort, a rather common plant in the neighborhood of the ruin. She was Bembex rostrata at work at provisioning her nest.Moved by curiosity, instead of going on to breakfast, I awaited the exit from the nest, which took place in about five minutes. Bembex scratched the sand and took flight from the side of the cliff. How long would she be away? I looked at my watch and arose.Ought I to go or to wait a little while? I took the latter decision. Out of malice, and without any idea of trying a control experiment to the admirable observations which science owes to the naturalist of Sérignan, of whom I was not thinking at all, I cut close to the sand the stalk of the swallow-wort and planted it a little nearer the mill, moving it about two feet, and being careful to put in place of the plant a little fragment of a bottle which I found in the mill. I seated myself in the shade and waited. Twenty minutes later the wasp dropped straight on to the place where I had cut the plant, that is to say, it deviated from its nest by a distance about equal to the displacement to which I had subjected the swallow-wort. It walked right and left, agitating its antennæ, appearing confused as to the locality.I followed these goings and comings for two or three minutes. Several times it flew away and then returned, always searching about. Pitying it and desiring, since I was now relieved of the fatigue which the heat had caused me, to go back to breakfast, I took my net and drawing near, made as if to catch it, swinging the pocket rapidly about. It veered away with a quick jerk of the wings. I then took up the swallow-wort, lifting the fragment which marked its original place, and replanted it in the sand.I again looked at my watch to see whether I could consecrate yet a few more minutes to curiosity without making my kind host, my friend Dr. MceRivron, and his wife, who honored me with the charming hospitality of Kursac, wait too long. It was only half past eleven; we usually did not breakfast until about noon; it would take only a quarter of an hour to traverse the distance from the mill of Caudan to the house. I could then, without fear of being chided, dispose of fifteen minutes. This lapse of time would perhaps suffice to show me whether mybestiolewould this time find the way to her nest without hesitation.I waited a little; five minutes had not passed when my Bembex, coming like an arrow, alighted on the sand near the plant, still holding the prey which I had noticed when she departed at my chasing her, after her vain attempts to find the entrance to her nest; but this time she did not hunt long. She felt about a little to right and left, but soon turned directly toward the entrance to the tunnel, distant scarcely two inches from the place where she had settled. My Bembex had a memory.

On July seventeenth, 1900, during a short sojourn at Pouliguen, on returning from a hunt after Diptera and Hymenoptera in the cliffs of Caudan, about eleven in the morning, in tropical heat, I paused to take breath near the old mill of Caudan and looked about for a little shadebefore continuing my walk to Pen-Château. I had seated myself on the stones of a slope shaded from the sun and was wiping the perspiration from my forehead, when I saw a large wasp arrive directly before me. I instinctively followed it with my eyes; it paused some yards from the mill on the side of the cliff, and began to open a nest which was placed scarcely twenty inches from the foot of a swallow-wort, a rather common plant in the neighborhood of the ruin. She was Bembex rostrata at work at provisioning her nest.

Moved by curiosity, instead of going on to breakfast, I awaited the exit from the nest, which took place in about five minutes. Bembex scratched the sand and took flight from the side of the cliff. How long would she be away? I looked at my watch and arose.

Ought I to go or to wait a little while? I took the latter decision. Out of malice, and without any idea of trying a control experiment to the admirable observations which science owes to the naturalist of Sérignan, of whom I was not thinking at all, I cut close to the sand the stalk of the swallow-wort and planted it a little nearer the mill, moving it about two feet, and being careful to put in place of the plant a little fragment of a bottle which I found in the mill. I seated myself in the shade and waited. Twenty minutes later the wasp dropped straight on to the place where I had cut the plant, that is to say, it deviated from its nest by a distance about equal to the displacement to which I had subjected the swallow-wort. It walked right and left, agitating its antennæ, appearing confused as to the locality.I followed these goings and comings for two or three minutes. Several times it flew away and then returned, always searching about. Pitying it and desiring, since I was now relieved of the fatigue which the heat had caused me, to go back to breakfast, I took my net and drawing near, made as if to catch it, swinging the pocket rapidly about. It veered away with a quick jerk of the wings. I then took up the swallow-wort, lifting the fragment which marked its original place, and replanted it in the sand.

I again looked at my watch to see whether I could consecrate yet a few more minutes to curiosity without making my kind host, my friend Dr. MceRivron, and his wife, who honored me with the charming hospitality of Kursac, wait too long. It was only half past eleven; we usually did not breakfast until about noon; it would take only a quarter of an hour to traverse the distance from the mill of Caudan to the house. I could then, without fear of being chided, dispose of fifteen minutes. This lapse of time would perhaps suffice to show me whether mybestiolewould this time find the way to her nest without hesitation.

I waited a little; five minutes had not passed when my Bembex, coming like an arrow, alighted on the sand near the plant, still holding the prey which I had noticed when she departed at my chasing her, after her vain attempts to find the entrance to her nest; but this time she did not hunt long. She felt about a little to right and left, but soon turned directly toward the entrance to the tunnel, distant scarcely two inches from the place where she had settled. My Bembex had a memory.

A curious thing about these wasps, and one which shows how much common feeling they have, is that they work in waves, all starting off on their hunting expeditions within a few minutes of each other, and returning together after the chase. At one time all the residents seem to be present, digging their nests, carrying in their booty, dashing at each other, and chasing the parasites with a tremendous amount of humming and swooping about. Then suddenly they are all gone. Nothing remains but multitudes of flies, which keep up a giddy dance over the field, and for ten or fifteen minutes the place seems deserted. Then the wasps begin to return, several coming at a time, and as if by magic the whole scene awakens to life. More than half of the wasps bring nothing home with them, and these fall to robbing their more fortunate companions. Those that are carrying flies must pause a moment, burdened as they are, to scratch away the earth at the entrance to the nest. When unmolested they go in very quickly, but it is just at this point that the marauders fall upon them, displaying an amount of persistence and energy in their attacks that, were it properly directed, might easily enable them to secure flies for themselves.

We once saw a wasp that had been fortunate enough, or perhaps unfortunate enough, to catch an immensefly, the wings of which stood out on both sides very conspicuously. This made her an especial mark for her unprincipled relatives. Half a dozen of them chased her about, like chickens pursuing one of their number that has found a worm. She circled and settled, and circled and swooped around for five or six minutes, continually pursued and attacked by the robbers, and quite unable to get into her nest. At last, curious to see what she was carrying, we made her drop her load, and secured it for ourselves. We found it to be a horse fly, quite dead, but showing no marks of violence. It was not wasted, for we afterward fed it to one of our wasp nurslings at home.

At another time we saw one wasp attack another that was bringing in a fly. In the struggle that ensued the owner lost her booty, as the two rolled over and over on the ground, and as they parted it was seized by the thief. They clinched again, and rolled on the ground as before, and this time the fly was recovered by the rightful owner. At this point, thinking that perhaps one of the wasps was a male, and that this might be their style of courtship, we seized both of them; whereupon the fly was dropped, and the two wasps turned their attention to attacking us. Both proved to be females. Not only do the Bembecids fight in this way for the possession of their prey—they quarrel even without apparent cause.We have seen two females digging their nests at a little distance apart, one of which was repeatedly attacked by the other, although she did nothing to provoke the aggressor. They are certainly very unneighborly, and have no idea of living in harmony. When flying in a threatening manner, either at us or at each other, they have a way of wagging their abdomens violently from side to side in a way well calculated to inspire terror.

In warm sunny weather spinolæ works industriously through the middle of the day, and seems determined to provide abundantly, not only for her own offspring, but for any unbidden guests that it may be her fate to care for. She never works more than four or five hours a day, however, and in unfavorable weather she does not work at all. On going over to the island one cloudy morning to spend some hours in watching the Bembex activities, we found the spot quiet and lifeless. No one seeing it for the first time would have dreamed of the multitudes of living creatures beneath his feet. The nests seemed to be all closed, but on peering curiously about we found one on sloping ground, in the suburbs of the colony, of which the door was open. Just within was the proprietor gazing out on the landscape, as she is shown in the illustration. She seemed to be leaning on her elbows, and her face, enlivened by two great goggle eyes, had anirresistibly comical aspect. With the exception of the omnipresent flies, this wasp was the only sign of life about the place. Even in good weather, and in working hours, the wasps sometimes rest, for we have seen them go in empty-handed, closing the door behind them, to remain for half an hour at a time.

ill131

BEMBEX SPINOLÆ LOOKING OUT OF NEST

BEMBEX SPINOLÆ LOOKING OUT OF NEST

BEMBEX SPINOLÆ LOOKING OUT OF NEST

There is one thought that must strike even a casual observer at the sight of the hordes of parasites that hover over a Bembex colony:—

“The buzzing flies, a persevering train,Incessant swarm, and chased return again.”

Why do not these wasps, fly-catchers as they are by profession, kill the worthless wretches that infest their homes, thriving abundantly on the fruits of their labor, a continual menace to the life and safety of their offspring? To the uninitiated it would seem that these flies might serve as food for the wasp larvæ quite as well as any of the dozen species that they actually take; but even if the wasp-mother believes that they possess indigestible qualities, it would be much less trouble to kill them and throw them away than to be perpetually chasing them to a little distance only to see them return as soon as she gives her attention to anything else. Whatever the reason for it may be, the relation between the wasps and the flies is certainly most curious and puzzling. Fabre’s explanation is that since this miserable little fly has its own part to play in nature, Bembex must respect it, thus preserving harmony in the world of living things. The idea is perfectly in accord with his own theories, but we find ourselves quite unable to accept it.

There can be no doubt that the parasites are a grave danger to Bembex. She suffers from them far more than any other wasp that we are familiar with, her mode of feeding the young rendering her peculiarly susceptibleto their attacks. Of the ten or twelve nests that we opened only one was free from them, the others containing from two to five lively maggots nearly as large as the wasp larvæ, which were sharing the food brought in by the mother. Fabre, who has studied the question thoroughly, has found as many as ten parasitic larvæ in one nest. He has also noticed that where the parasites are most numerous the wasp-larva is proportionately small and emaciated, reaching only one half or one third of its normal size. When it attempts to spin its cocoon it has not strength enough to do so, and thus perishes miserably among the pupæ of the interlopers, which have the advantage of developing more rapidly. He has proved, by experiments upon nests transported to his study, that although the invaders preserve friendly relations with the rightful owner of the nest so long as food is abundant, they nevertheless, at the first suggestion of scarcity, fall upon the wasp larva and ruthlessly devour it. This “black action” he has seen with his own eyes. In view of this base ingratitude, we are more than ever impressed with the troubles of the poor Bembex mother, as she tries to feed a dozen mouths where she has bargained for only one.

We several times saw a fly follow a wasp into her nest, remaining within for half a minute, and it is probablethat they go in to lay their eggs. According to Fabre, it is the habit of the flies that are parasitic upon the half-dozen species of Bembex that he has studied to seize the moment at which the fly projects from under the abdomen of the wasp as she enters the nest; and he has even known them to lay two or three eggs on one fly in the instant of time that its body was exposed.

Fabre took a partly grown Bembex larva from the nest, where it was surrounded by the remains of twenty flies. He fed it generously, and it ate sixty-two more, making a total of eighty-two in the eight days that passed before the spinning of the cocoon. Our experiments in this line gave similar results. We took charge of a partly grown larva on the afternoon of August tenth, and between that date and August fifteenth, when it spun its cocoon, it ate forty-two house flies besides a big Tabanus.

Fabre thinks that under natural conditions the mother does not give the larva all it can eat at one time, but provides it with what she considers a reasonable amount of food, and keeps anything that she catches beyond this out of its reach. He draws his conclusion from the fact that he has found several flies in the tunnel leading to the nest, while the larva had as many more close to it. It would certainly be convenient for Bembex to have areserve of this kind in case of rainy weather, but the forethought implied in such an action seems to require a higher degree of intelligence than can be claimed for her.

In one nest we found a single fly with a long cylindrical egg attached to the left side of the thorax just at the origin of the third leg. In another, which we had seen made and provisioned, we found, six days later, a larva which we judged to be four days old. Assuming that the egg was laid on the first day, it must have taken it about two days to hatch. Other nests gave us larvæ in all stages of development, surrounded by the remains of Diptera, among which Syrphus, Tabanus, and Musca were represented.

In regard to the condition of the flies captured by Bembex, we have never seen the crushing of the thorax, which is noted by both Wesenberg and Fabre. Indeed, the flies that we found were not always dead, since in two instances they responded readily to stimulation. Similar results have been obtained by Mr. S. W. Dunning of Hartford, Connecticut.

Twice we have seen our spinolæ, as she was bringing home her prey, alight near the nest and sting it as it was held with the second pair of legs. We could see the process distinctly, since she is slow and clumsy, and, in oneinstance, had difficulty in reaching the fly, falling over to one side in an awkward manner. It is probable, then, that this is a habit with the wasp, but that the sting is usually given at the place of capture.

We opened a number of Bembex nests, but succeeded in raising only one larva, which we took when it was half grown. This one, during the five days that passed before it spun the cocoon, ate forty-three flies.

Mr. Bates has some notes on Monedula signata, which takes nothing but flies, and even confines itself to a single species, although it must sometimes go half a mile away to find it. This reminds us of Pompilus quinquenotatus, which never takes anything but Epeira strix.

ill136

BEMBEX

BEMBEX

BEMBEX

A considerable contribution to our knowledge of the genus Bembex has been made in the paper by Wesenberg (written in Danish) which has already been referred to. This paper deals with Bembex rostrata. It was translated for Mr. Ashmead by Mr. Martin Linell.

ill137

A CORNER OF THE BEMBEX COLONY

A CORNER OF THE BEMBEX COLONY

A CORNER OF THE BEMBEX COLONY

.

It seems that rostrata makes its nest in solid sand, covering it up with loose sand, and usually, also, with a little flat stone, to prevent parasites from entering. The cell measures one cubic inch, the entrance tunnel being one and one half centimeters long, and arcuate. A cell contains four or five fresh flies (Lucilia, Eristalis, etc.), and torn-off wings, sucked-out thoraces, and in the middle of these, a big flat larva.

When the larva is hatched the mother brings more and more flies, the flies being larger and larger as it grows. This adjustment of the size of the fly to the growth of the larva has also been noted by Fabre.

Wesenberg says that fifty Bembecids will nest on a spot as big as a room during a period of three months. The time required for the development of the larva is two weeks, this giving five or six young ones for the season. He queries, “Does each female have more than one nest? and if so, how can she remember them?” To determine this point we marked six wasps by touching them with differently colored paints, putting near their nests pebbles painted to correspond with the owners, and then watched them closely for three hours.During this time the red wasp returned regularly to the red nest, the blue to the blue, and so on. They were watched for an hour and a half on the following day with the same result, so that it seems quite certain that spinolæ has only one nest at a time. To feed two larvæ at once, with interlopers thrown in, would be a heavier task than the most determined industry could accomplish.

Chapter VIITHE BURROWERSDUFOUR, in describing the fearful ravages of Cerceris ornata among the bees, says that the wasps of this genus are among other insects what eagles and hawks are among birds. While this characterization does not seem to fit the American species, it is certainly true that the genus stands out as one of those in which the distinctive peculiarities are strongly marked. They might be considered the aristocrats in the world of wasps, their habits of reposeful meditation and their calm, unhurried ways being far removed from the nervous manners of the Pompilidæ or the noisy, tumultuous life of Bembex. Their intelligence is shown by their reluctance to betray their nests, and by their uneasiness at any slight change in the objects that surround them. It is not necessary to attempt to catch them or to make threatening gestures, in order to arouse their sense of danger. If you are sitting quietly by a nest when the wasp opens her door in the morning she will notice you at once, and will probably drop out of sight as thoughshe resented your intrusion into her privacy. After a little she will come up again and will learn to tolerate you, but at the least movement on your part, almost at the winking of an eyelid, she will disappear.ill142NEST OF CERCERIS NIGRESCENSOur four representatives of this genus all prey upon beetles that are injurious to vegetation, and therefore deserve the gratitude of agriculturists. Nigrescens, with her pale grayish bands, is a very trying wasp to deal with. We had seen her flying about in the garden for weeks before we succeeded in tracking her home, and when we did succeed she was so late about getting up in the morning, stayed away from home so many hours at a time, and went to bed so early in the afternoon, that we were not well repaid for watching her nest all day. Fumipennis, large and handsome, with a broad yellow band at the front of the abdomen, is another wasp that has noregard for the convenience of the people who are watching her. You may sit by her big open hole for hours without seeing her, and when she comes she drops in so suddenly that, unless you are very much on your guard, you are not sure even then what she is. Clypeata and deserta are better subjects for study.The nests of our species are all deep, tortuous, and very difficult to excavate. We have never succeeded in finding their pockets; and yet, for various reasons, we feel perfectly certain that all of them are like C. ornata in provisioning, successively, a number of cells which lead out of the main gallery. When one of these cells is filled with food, and the egg deposited, it is probably closed up, and thus separated from the runway. From our experience late in the season with the nests of another wasp, we are inclined to think that we made a mistake in looking for pockets at the lower end of the tunnel. Had we searched higher up, at the point of the curve, we might have found them, the lower part of the gallery probably beingdesigned merely for a dwelling-place for the mother of the family.ill143CERCERIS CLYPEATABut although we did not get distinct pockets, there was, in at least one nest, a supply of food that would have far exceeded the wants of a single larva. We did not succeed in finding eggs on different groups of beetles; but from a nest into which the wasp was still carrying food we took a half-grown larva which was identified as being hers. The fact, too, that a wasp occupies a nest for so long a time as ten days or two weeks points to the conclusion that she uses it for a number of eggs which are laid at intervals.Cerceris digs her nest, deep as it is, all at once. In this she is a contrast to her near relatives of the genus Philanthus, who busy themselves for an hour or so every morning with fresh excavations.On the eighth of July the weather was so warm and bright that we went down to the garden at half past eight o’clock, knowing that it was rather early, but hoping that the hot sunshine would tempt the wasps to industry. We had walked up and down several times, when suddenly, right in the pathway, a nest appeared. A great quantity of loose earth had been taken out and heaped up, probably on the preceding day, and in the midst of this a little hole had been opened since wepassed before. The place looked so promising that we sat down to watch it, and a few minutes later we were rewarded by a glimpse of some antennæ down the gallery, and then a little face with yellow markings appeared but quickly vanished. Now followed a very coquettish performance. The wasp came slowly creeping up again and again, only to drop out of sight as soon as she had reached the opening. After a time she grew bolder, and sat in her doorway, twitching her head this way and that in a very expressive manner, as though she were planning the work of the day; but it was plain that although she was up early, business cares were not weighing heavily upon her mind, for forty minutes passed before she came out of the nest, and after making three or four circles about the spot, flew away.How much livelier and more interesting it would have been if we could have followed her! We tried to guess at what she was doing, and imagined her hunting industriously. After fifteen or twenty minutes it seemed to us that she must have caught something, and that she was surely returning. Most probably she was not working at all, but was breakfasting leisurely and exchanging compliments with her neighbors; for when she did come home after keeping us waiting for an hour and a half, she brought nothing with her, and seemedquite unconscious of the fact that greater things had been expected of her.We had placed a stone upon a dead leaf near by, to mark the neighborhood of the nest, thinking that even a Cerceris could not object to so simple an arrangement of natural objects; but our wasp noticed it at once, and evidently with much suspicion and disapproval. She began by circling several times just above it. Then she alighted on it and examined it carefully, walking over it, and creeping underneath, perhaps to see whether it in any way menaced the safety of her nest, perhaps as the completion of a locality study made the day before. She then rose on her wings, and after a little more circling, dropped suddenly into her hole.So far we had not been getting on very rapidly, but from this time things took a turn. Cerceris is never in a hurry, and yet she may be relied upon to do a certain amount of work every day. The one that we were now watching had probably come back for a final look at her newly made nest before beginning to provision it; for she soon reappeared, and this time really went to work, since in forty minutes she brought home a beetle which she carried by the snout, venter up, in her mandibles, supporting it with the second pair of legs while flying. She was much annoyed at our presence, and circledabout as before. Twice she alighted near by, and walked around for a few minutes, and when she did this all her feet came down to the ground, the beetle being allowed to hang loosely. At last she made the best of a bad matter, and went in. The rest of the morning was occupied with hunting, the capture of each beetle taking about forty-five minutes. Every time that she came home she spent fifteen or twenty minutes in the nest.This species soon became very common, and for two weeks scarcely a morning passed without our finding at least one newly-made nest. The study of clypeata, however, consumes a great deal of time. For example, we found, one morning, two nests within six inches of each other. It turned out afterward that these were inhabited by two different wasps; but at the moment we supposed that one of them had been dug and deserted and then a second one made, and wishing to know which one was occupied we resolved to watch and see. After waiting for three hours we saw one wasp returning; but upon noticing us she veered off and began to circle about. She was heavily laden, and her burden, instead of being supported by the second pair of legs, as is sometimes the case, hung down under the thorax and abdomen. After a moment she alighted on a plant near by, and seemed to consider the situation, then circled a little more, andflew away, remaining out of sight for fifteen minutes, then another return, more circlings and hesitations. She seemed to feel the weight of the beetle now, and alighted frequently on the ground and walked about; yet she would not go in, so reluctant was she to betray her nest. In this way she kept us waiting for a whole hour, although we were not very near to her, and were as still as statues. At last we retreated, and stood as far back as we could and still keep the hole in view. She now came closer, and, after hanging poised on her wings for a moment, dropped into her nest.We once found a nest of this species in process of construction. A large heap of fresh earth had been pushed out, which entirely covered the spot; but at intervals there were upheavals from below which betrayed the presence of the wasp. When we saw it first it was half past eight o’clock, and we judged, from what had been accomplished, that she must have been at work at least an hour. It was half past nine before the excavation was complete. We had not been certain, up to this time, as to what we were watching; but now we had the pleasure of seeing her open her doorway from below and stand in the entrance while she washed her face with her fore feet, like a cat. When they rest at the mouth of the hole the first legs, which are yellow, are bowed in a semicircleon each side of the yellow face, the distal joints being bent up so that the wasps seem to be standing on their elbows. This attitude, which is often seen in Bembex spinolæ, gives them a delightfully amusing, bow-legged appearance. They usually open their nests in the morning at about nine o’clock,—a little earlier or later according to the time at which the sun strikes the spot. Then they spend from forty minutes to an hour in taking a survey, the least movement on the part of a watcher causing them to drop out of sight as if the earth had given way beneath them. Sometimes there is a little way-station an inch or two within the tunnel, and the wasp falls back only to this point, and here she may be seen, if one peeps in cautiously, either quietly awaiting the retreat of the intruder, or, perhaps, performing her toilet in a leisurely and elegant manner.Whenever she leaves her nest she makes three or four rapid circles around the spot to freshen her memory of the locality. The most thorough study that we saw made by clypeata was in the case of the wasp mentioned before, that was so long in carrying her beetle in because of our being on the ground. When she finally did go in she stayed only an instant—just long enough to deposit her load—and then came out and spent a long time in an investigation of all the surrounding objects,flying in and out among the plants, now high, now low, and circling again and again around the spot. It looked as though she had been puzzled and disturbed by the presence of unaccustomed things. As soon as the survey was over she went inside and closed the door, as though its object had been not so much to strengthen her memory as to correct former impressions.The work of bringing in beetles goes on very irregularly, and as a rule not more than two or three are stored in the course of a day. It is not unusual for clypeata to spend three or four hours away from home and then come back without anything; and often, even in the middle of the day, she passes an hour or two in the seclusion of her nest. We had several nests under observation for a week at a time without ever once seeing the owners, although they were evidently occupied, since they were sometimes open and sometimes closed. The outer entrance is always left open when the wasp goes away, although possibly access to the pockets may be barred below; but when she enters she closes the door unless she means to come out again at once. The closing is sometimes effected by pushing the earth up backwards, with the end of the abdomen; but the hole is rather too large for this method, and more frequently the wasp comes up head first, carrying a load of earth in her frontlegs. This is placed just within and to one side of the entrance, and then more armfuls are brought up, until, after two or three trips, the opening is entirely filled.We once captured the wasp in a bottle, as she returned, loaded, to the nest. She dropped the beetle, but soon picked it up again and stung it vigorously,with intention, as the French say, first under the neck, and then further back, behind the first pair of legs. After this it was dropped while the wasp fluttered about for a few minutes, but it was then picked up again, and stung as before. We both saw this operation repeated in exactly the same way, four different times, with intervals of five or six minutes between.In a nest which we excavated after watching it for nine days, we found nothing until we had gone six inches down, and at this point the tunnel was lost; but mixed with the crumbly earth that we took out of the hole, we found eight beetles and a half-grown larva of clypeata. The destruction of this nest was accomplished one morning, and when we came back to the spot twenty-four hours later we found that a new one had been made close by, doubtless by the same individual. We had expected to find her bringing beetles and dropping them foolishly on the ground like Paul Marchal’s Cerceris ornata, and were gratified that she showed an advancein intelligence over that species, although to be sure she would have been still wiser had she chosen an entirely new neighborhood. Another individual was so much disturbed by our scrutiny that she dropped her beetle at the entrance to her nest. She did not pick it up again and utilize it, although it lay for three days in the dust at the threshold.As to the condition of the beetles stored by clypeata: in the first nest that we opened we found eight, seven of which were dead, while the eighth, which we had just seen stung several times, was alive, but died on the following day. The second nest gave us five beetles, all of them dead and dry. In the other nests that we opened we found nothing, though we knew that the beetles were there had we only been skillful enough to discover them.Of Cerceris deserta, which closely resembles clypeata, but appears later in the season, we had only a single example. We chanced to see her dropping into a crevice among some lumps of earth, and at first could scarcely believe that this was the dwelling-place of a wasp, as there was nothing whatever about it to indicate a nest; and even after we had removed the rough pieces of earth above, we could see nothing of the loose material that must have been carried out.She was much like clypeata in her manners, with thesame habit of surveying the world from her doorway, and manifesting the same annoyance at our presence when she was returning to the nest; but she carried in more beetles in the course of the day and worked much more rapidly. Between nine and eleven o’clock one morning she brought in five loads, and some of the journeys occupied only ten minutes.ill153CERCERIS DESERTA: LOCALITY STUDY BEFORE LEAVING NESTThe first time that she found us sitting by her nest she circled about for nearly an hour, seeming unable to make up her mind to enter. At length we withdrew a little way, but still her suspicions were not entirelyallayed; and after a further study of the situation she dropped, not into her own nest, but into a large cricket hole near by. Taken aback by this manœuvre, and thinking that perhaps we had a second individual to deal with, we stealthily approached, and peering in, could see the cricket inside, the wasp having slipped beyond. It did not seem possible that the little creature could be endeavoring to deceive us, and yet what other explanation could be offered for her conduct? We again took up our distant position, and after ten minutes more had the satisfaction of seeing the wasp slip out of the false nest and drop instantly into the true one. After a little she became quite accustomed to us, and entered her nest without the least delay.The prey of deserta is held in the mandibles, and while we were watching her she did not support it with the second legs, even when flying.Philanthus punctatus is a pretty little yellow-banded species much resembling Cerceris in appearance. The nest consists of a main gallery with pockets leading from it, each pocket being stored with one egg and enough bees to nourish a single larva. When the wasps emerge from the cocoon they find themselves in the company of their nearest relatives and in possession of a dwelling-place, and they all live together for a time before startingout independently to seek their fortunes. On the fifth of August we discovered on the island a happy family of this kind, consisting of three brothers and four sisters, the females, with their bright yellow faces and mandibles, being handsomer than the males. They seemed to be on the most amicable terms with each other, their only trouble being that while they were all fond of looking out, the doorway was too small to hold more than one at a time. The nest was opened in the morning at about nine o’clock, and during the next thirty or forty minutes their comical little faces would appear, one after another, each wasp enjoying the view for a few minutes with many twitchings of the head, and then retreating to make way for another, perhaps in response to some hint from behind. Then one by one they would come out, circle about the spot, and depart, sometimes leaving one of their number to keep house all day alone. They usually left the hole open; but when there was a wasp within, it was soon closed from below. During this playtime period they did not return until they were ready to settle down for the night, the first one coming home at half after two or three o’clock, and the others arriving at intervals, none of them staying out later than five. Most commonly they found the right spot without trouble, scratched open the hole, and then either closedit behind them or stood waiting in the doorway for the next arrival; but occasionally they had difficulty in locating the nest, and worked at two or three different places before finding it.We kept these wasps under close observation, often watching the nest from the moment it was opened in the morning until it was closed at night. On the twelfth of August, a week from the time that we first saw them, one of the females felt the responsibilities of life settling down upon her. At half after four in the afternoon she began to enlarge the nest, and worked with a great deal of energy for forty minutes. After a long disappearance within the hole she would come up backwards, kicking behind her a quantity of earth which was not only taken outside, but was then spread out far and wide. She worked with the front pair of legs, which were curved inward, after the manner of Bembex; and when a pebble or some such object came in her way she either dragged it to a distance with her mandibles or pushed it before her with her head in a way quite peculiar to herself. In distributing the earth that was taken out, she went five and one half inches from the nest—a distance which is much greater than is common among wasps, but which accords well with the habits of punctatus, since she continues the work of excavation from day to day.ill157PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUSOn August thirteenth, at half after eight in the morning, we found that a second female, perhaps inspired by the example of her sister, had made a new nest within two inches of the first one, and had flown away, leaving it open. Presently the other wasps began to appear, one after the other, in their doorway. Two of the males flew away, and one of the females, doubtless the one that we had seen digging the night before, began to work afresh at making the nest larger. Probably she was excavating a pocket for the reception of an egg, and the amount of labor required was enormously increased by the great length (about twenty-two inches) of the main gallery by which the displaced earth must be carried out. She worked for an hour, and in spreading the dirt about, inadvertently filled in the opening of the second nest. At length she flew away.At ten o’clock a female arrived carrying a bee, and tried to find nest No. 2. She came to the wrong place, and worked about, here and there, for some minutes, holding the bee under the thorax, clasped by the secondpair of legs. Being unsuccessful, she dropped her burden, and flew away for a few minutes. While she was gone we removed a leaf that had fallen over her nest, and on her return she at once descended upon the right spot, and began to scratch open the entrance, the bee being kicked backward with the rejected earth. When the way was clear, however, she picked it up, brought it toward the hole, dropped it, ran in and out, brought it nearer, ran in again, and turning around in the tunnel, seized the bee in her mandibles and pulled it down. This performance was due to the accidental obstruction of the gallery, for we afterward found that punctatus ordinarily flies directly into her nest, or, when it is closed, pauses on the wing to scratch an opening with the first legs. The bee is pushed backward a little as she goes in, but does not often project from under her abdomen.At fifteen minutes after ten the worker from nest No. 1 brought in a bee, and from that time the two worked industriously. They showed some individuality in their ways, for No. 2 always closed her door when she went away, and never circled at all, while No. 1 invariably circled before leaving, and always left her nest open. To be sure, there was a female left on guard, so that perhaps she did not feel the need of caution.Our wasps had not far to go for their victims. Forty feet away, on the eastern side of the island, was a steep declivity, and here, in the soft crumbly soil, was a great Halictus settlement. No prettier sight can be imagined than is presented by this colony on every sunny summer day. The whole bank is riddled with nests, and at the entrance of each stands a female bee, her tiny head exactly filling the opening. The bees are constantly arriving, laden with pollen, whereupon the sentinels politely back inward to make way for them. Into this scene of contented industry descends the ravaging Philanthus, taking guards and workers alike.On the afternoon of the fourteenth of August our two wasps were in the full tide of affairs. No. 1 took in eleven bees within two hours, but her record was somewhat confused, as two other females were going in and out at the same time. We felt sure that neither of these was hunting, but one of them shared in the labor of the nest by helping with the work of excavation.No. 2, however, was alone, so that we could keep a definite account of her comings and goings. We watched her from half past one until five, at which hour she came home without a load, and at once closed the nest for the night, after having stored thirteen bees in three hours and nine minutes. In some cases the capture ofthe bee occupied only one, two, or three minutes, while at other times she was gone much longer. At each return she stayed only an instant—just long enough to deposit the bee—inside the nest, and then spent a minute in carefully closing the hole. The wasps that were going in and out of nest No. 1 sometimes closed it when they went away, but this was done in an untidy fashion, quite different from the nicety and precision of No. 2.At half after five o’clock the wasp that had been digging for some little time at nest No. 1 flew to nest No. 2, opened it, and attempted to enter, but was quickly driven out by the owner. She then dug a little in several other places, finally returning to sleep in the family home. On the next day we found that No. 2 was tolerating in her nest one of the females that had not yet begun to hunt, but whether it was the one she had rejected the night before or the fourth member of the sisterhood, we could not tell. On the eighteenth, three days later, the wasp had left this temporary home and made a nest for herself four feet away on the hillside. The males were still living in the first nest with two females.When the weather was cold and cloudy punctatus remained closely housed within the nest, or, at most, came out to do an hour’s digging, and then disappeared. The warmer the weather, and the more brilliant thesunshine, the more rapidly they worked. When leaving the nest they would often creep out and walk around it three or four times before rising on their wings, and even then would sometimes alight once or twice before flying away. The males, especially, liked to stand about for a time, watching their more industrious sisters at their work. The females usually began the day with digging, and frequently closed it, toward night, in the same way.In order to see the method of stinging, we at one time provided ourselves with a number of bees, and putting one of them into a bottle, introduced a wasp. She seized it almost immediately, with great vigor, and stung it once, under the neck, and then dragged it up and down the bottle by one antenna which was held in the mandibles. After a moment she shifted it and held it with the second legs in the usual way. We now put in another bee, which she also caught, stung in the same place, and then dropped without relaxing her hold of the first one. As she seemed to have nothing further to show us we released her, and after circling a little she took into her nest the bee that she was carrying.In our next experiment we used a larger glass, thinking that with more space we might see malaxation. The instant that the wasp was introduced she grasped thebee with one rapid powerful motion, and stung it just under the neck as before. Then holding it with the second legs she began to fly about in the glass. We now introduced another bee, whereupon the first one was relinquished, and the second was treated in exactly the same way. The stinging was the beginning and the end of the operation, and when we released her she at once took the bee into the nest. There was no malaxation outside, and certainly there was none within, as was shown by the rapidity with which the wasps issued from the nest after storing the bees. We were successful in getting the wasps to sting only when we tried the experiment with those that were hunting. When those that had not yet begun to store their nests were put into the glass they paid no attention to the bees.The victim of the sting of punctatus is killed at once. Life is extinct from the instant that the stroke is given. This is true also of the honey-bee that is the victim of Fabre’s Philanthus apivorus; but the explanation that he gives of the action of his wasp in thus dealing sudden death instead of paralyzing its foe—that the honey must be sucked out of the bee before it can be safely used as food for the larva—does not hold good in our case, since the honey that Halictus carries to mix with the pollen upon which her offspring are fed, is not removed.ill163NEST OF PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUSA-B, 3½ inches; B-C, 5 inches; C-D, 14 inches; D-E, 8 inchesAs time went on we found on the island two other Philanthus colonies, although that is rather too large a word to apply to them, since one consisted of four nests and the other of only two. When we came to excavate the nests of this species we were greatly astonished at the length of the gallery, and not until then did we properly appreciate the industry of these little wasps. It is no small undertaking to follow one of their tunnels for twenty-two inches, even when, as in this case, the greater part of it is parallel to the surface of the ground. We did not find distinct pockets, as the soil was very crumbly and fell in as we worked, but we came upon clumps of bees an inch or so to one side of the gallery and about three inches apart, with larvæ in different stages of development. In one nest we found twenty-six bees intwo clumps, some of them half-eaten, and some of them fresh, but all quite dead. We have no doubt that punctatus completely provisions one pocket and closes the opening from it into the gallery, before she starts another, making a series of six or eight independent cells. The provision for one larva is probably twelve or fourteen bees, the capture of which, in good weather, would be a fair day’s work.That the males do not always stay on in their ancestral home is shown by an observation that we made on the only occasion that we ever saw this species in our garden. Nothing was stirring at half past three o’clock in the afternoon, and we had given up work and started for home, when, in going up an inclined part of the field, we noticed something in motion within a ragged-edged hole which ran obliquely into the ground. It seemed strange that a wasp should be beginning its nest at so late an hour; but a wasp it was, as we could plainly see when we took an attitude sufficiently humble. It was loosening the earth with its mandibles, and then pushing it backward with its hind legs and abdomen. We had scarcely settled down to watching it when a second one of the same species appeared, and with a good deal of fuss and flutter began to dig its hole close by. The spot chosen by this second one proved unsatisfactory, andanother beginning was made in a new place. Again something was wrong, nor was a third choice any better. At last, however, the work was started in earnest, and might have been carried to a conclusion if we had not caught the little creature to satisfy a suspicion that had been growing in our minds. Yes, we were right. The worker was not a female making a nest for the rearing of her young, but a male punctatus, preparing a shelter for the night.In the mean time the first wasp had pushed back such a quantity of earth that the hole was entirely closed, but every few minutes he came backing out to clear the way. At the end of half an hour all became quiet. The door remained closed, and doubtless the wasp was fast asleep. Putting a blade of grass and then an inverted tumbler over the nest, we left him for the night.On removing the glass at half past seven the next morning, we found the nest open but the wasp not visible. At half past eight the head appeared just inside the hole, the long antennæ twitching now to this side, now to that, as if an inspection were being made. Soon the head came out. The wasp stood for some minutes making a survey, looking to right and left with lively jerks of the body. Then, apparently concluding that the day was not far enough advanced, he came out, whirledaround, and ran head-first into the nest. He probably took another nap, for all was quiet until just before ten o’clock, when the antennæ appeared again. The survey was taken as before, first from within and then with the head in view. At last he flew out, and making three circles, each one wider than the last, about the place, flew away. He stayed out all day, and had not returned at half past three in the afternoon; but on going down at half past four we found that he had gone in and closed the door from below.It is clear, then, that these males do not construct a new lodging every night, but return to the same spot to sleep. Other wasps creep into crevices. We have often found them, in the morning, in the holes of the posts of our cottage porch; but we are glad to be able to put it down to the credit of one male that he has sufficient foresight and industry to provide a sleeping-place, and sufficient intelligence to return to the spot when the declining sun warns him that evening is approaching.While punctatus was in the height of its activity we found another species, P. ventilabris, taking bees of several genera and species into a ground nest. She also carried her prey with her second pair of legs, and whenever she left her nest she closed the door. She was a shy little thing, and did not approve of our interest inher. At one time, being startled by some movement on our part, she dropped her load and flew away. We placed the bee upon the closed nest, and when she came back with another, she paused and looked at it, took in the one she was carrying, and then returned for number one. This was placed on the threshold while she entered and turned around, and was then pulled in. Some wasps, notably C. ornata and our little tornado, refuse to take in their prey, even if they have caught it themselves, excepting in a regular succession of events; and thus the more reasonable conduct of ventilabris gains in interest.To the west of Milwaukee, across the valley of the Menominee, rises a sandy hilltop which is a little insect kingdom by itself. Ants of course abound, and the gentle little solitary bees, with their loads of pollen, may be seen everywhere, seeming to melt into the ground, so quickly and quietly do they open their burrows. Here Oxybelus plys her trade of fly-catching, and graceful Ammophila dances with her shadow over the sunny ground, while Cerceris rests in her doorway with an air of leisurely superiority to the vulgar cares of life; and here, one day in early July, a sudden access of energy seemed to strike Aphilanthops frigidus, a wasp which we had found a year before taking in the wingless queens of ants. All at once they were digging everywhere, bitingand scratching with great energy, and soon disappearing in the depths of their sandy tunnels. So deep is their primary gallery that even in this easy medium it takes them the best part of a day to get it ready for storing; but once finished it doubtless serves as a home through the season. It has at the entrance a little cup-shaped vestibule where the wasp drops the ant as she enters, running out of sight herself, and then, after she has turned around, coming back to pull it within. This nest is a very difficult one to excavate neatly, as the sand falls at the slightest touch.A day or two after we had seen frigidus making her residential arrangements, we found twenty-five or thirty within a few feet of each other, working with great ardor at carrying in queens, the doors being left closed or open according to individual judgment. The steadiest workers brought one every forty minutes, scarcely pausing inside the nest, but others made long stays within, leaving the door closed. The ants were carried under the body with all the legs folded around them, but they were heavy things, and were often dropped as the wasp flew across the field, giving opportunities for robbery that were promptly taken advantage of. We picked up one of these ants and placed it in the doorway of a wasp that had just gone in. She came up twice, looked at it, and backed down again; but the third time she first touched it, then seized it and took it below. From another wasp that was just entering we took the ant she had dropped and moved it half an inch away. When she had turned and come up for it, she seemed surprised, came out and looked about, found it and dropped it in the doorway, going in herself to turn around as before. We seized this chance to move it again, and again she came out, found it, took it back, and dropped it. This was repeated five times, but when she took it in for the sixth time, after dropping it, she whirled around and picked it up so quickly that our malice was foiled.ill169APHILANTHOPS GATHERING ANTS.We were puzzled by the actions of a wasp that approached her nest again and again, but always circled away without entering, until looking closely we saw that she was pursued by two tiny flies. When she alighted and walked about awhile with her ant tucked under the third leg on one side, the flies alighted also and walked about behind her. In the end she evaded them by a sudden drop into her hole.A wasp now came circling along with an ant in her grasp, and settled down between two small weeds that grew about four inches apart. She stood quiet a moment and then began to dig, but had evidently struck the wrong spot, for after a moment she moved and triedanother place. Not finding the entrance, she rose and flew close under one of the plants and began to scratch again, but still in vain. For ten minutes she persisted, keeping within a few inches of the spot, and holding on to the ant all the time, although it was dreadfully in her way as she walked about. Then she dropped it and began to dig more vigorously, dividing her attention between the two spots she had attempted at first. She seemed troubled at having to leave the ant, and often picked it up and tried to hold it while she worked. Once in a while she would take it with her, and after circling about the spot would disappear, but in a few minutes she would return. It seemed to us that two little plants growing near together must have been her landmarks, and that probably she had been deceived by the likeness that those before us bore to the ones near her nest. Again and again she seemed to hesitate and think the matter over, but gradually one of the holes absorbed her more and more. At the end of an hour she was out of sight in it, and had carried her ant down, although she was still kicking out sand. It was evident that her memory had played her false, and that she had either covered her hole so neatly that she could not find the spot herself, or had missed the place entirely. She had accommodated herself to circumstances pretty well,although she ought to have realized earlier that it would be easier to dig one nest than two.We now tried to excavate a nest, but could not follow the tunnel, although we found clumps of ants at different levels, some with larvæ feeding on them. The deepest were eighteen inches down. Hoping to secure a guide, we borrowed an ant as it was dropped in the doorway and tied a thread to it. The wasp pulled it in and took it part way down with this attachment; but before any great depth was reached, the thread was seemingly bitten off, as we found the free end without the ant. A second attempt brought no better results.So long as we were quiet the wasps did not notice us, but after being disturbed they became shy and circled about a good deal before entering. Some of the ants were completely paralyzed, while others moved their abdomens, legs, and mouth parts. All through the morning, the whole place was in a bustle, but when we came back, after eating our luncheon in a shady spot, quiet reigned; the colony seemed asleep, and although we waited for an hour not a wasp showed herself.The ants that these wasps were bringing all had wings. The European genus Fertonius takes worker ants which can be picked up anywhere; but so far as we know, these queens leave the nest only at the time of theirnuptial flight, after which the wings are lost. How then are they captured? Can it be that the wasps, though not much larger than their prey, descend into the home of the ants, bearding the lions in their den, and carrying off their young queens by force of arms? This smacks of heroism.Much interested in the matter, we carefully examined the ant-hills of the neighborhood. Those on top of the hill had openings too small to admit frigidus, supposing she had wanted to enter, but down on the roadside below we found some larger doorways and sat down beside them. We had scarcely arrived when a frigidus appeared on the scene, alighting six feet away. That she should have come hunting so soon seemed almost too good to be true, but she certainly was not doing anything else. She did not dig, nor feed on the clover, nor circle about as though looking for her nest, but began to clean and brush herself assiduously. Then she climbed a tall grass blade, and swinging at the top went through some curious gymnastic performances. Then she brushed herself again, drawing her third legs over the sides of her abdomen. This went on from moment to moment, until half an hour had passed, and more than once the painful suspicion crossed our minds that this was some trifling male putting in the hours between breakfast andluncheon. One encouraging fact cheered us: aimless as the wasp appeared she was slowly drawing nearer and nearer to the nest; and at last, alighting on the top of a weed close by, she crouched there in a most peculiar attitude, and gazed intently at the opening. Absorbed and tense, she looked about to leap upon her prey; but after a time she relaxed and moved about a little. Presently she came close to the entrance and seemed on the point of going in; but the ants were swarming up and down, and we thought that perhaps that step required more courage than she possessed. At any rate, she did not enter, but hung about for some minutes and then flew away.Was this a young wasp out on her first hunt? What strange antiphonal desires must have stirred at the sight of the nest, and how mysterious was the power that drew her to it! Was there in her brain any image of the queen she must seek and sting and carry away from among her guards and subjects? Or had she perhaps already achieved the adventure, and did the memory of the bitter nips that little ant jaws can give make it a harder task than it was the first time, when she risked the ills she knew not of? That she hesitated and carried on the work reluctantly seemed to show that her flesh was weak and needed the prick of conscience to drive it on.Had we here then the small beginnings of moral sense and perception of duty? Can it be that of such humble origin is the power that “doth preserve the stars from wrong”?We went on with these meditations for several days while lingering, with gradually diminishing hopefulness, over one ant-hill after another. The wasps were carrying in winged queens by the score, but they did not come our way to find them; and although we ranged about widely, we failed to see the capture. Occasionally we met a frigidus hunting, running about on the ground and poking her head, not only into ant holes, but into holes of all sorts, and as we sometimes saw young queens (wingless however) starting to dig their nests, we thought these might be the object of the search. The weather was cold and windy, most unpropitious for swarming, and yet frigidus was working as briskly as ever; so that we began to feel sure that she could not depend upon meeting the queens outside the nest, but must enter to get them. Just as this point we received a letter from Mr. William M. Wheeler, well known as an authority on ants, saying that he felt very sure that the wasp could not extract the queens from the nest, but must find them running on the ground, just after the nuptial flight, before they dug their holes and started their colonies.Respecting this opinion, but still feeling unconvinced, we caught a wasp in a glass, and carrying it to an ant-hill, inverted it so that she was confined just over the entrance. After buzzing up and down for a moment, she alighted and walked calmly into the hole; but a fraction of a second later she came rushing madly out again, pursued by the most furious lot of ants that ever defended the home city against invasion. Down tumbled our air castles about courage and duty, for however frigidus gets her queens, it is not in that way. We have not yet seen the meeting and the capture, but hope that sometime we may be lucky enough to be on the right spot at the right time.

THE BURROWERS

DUFOUR, in describing the fearful ravages of Cerceris ornata among the bees, says that the wasps of this genus are among other insects what eagles and hawks are among birds. While this characterization does not seem to fit the American species, it is certainly true that the genus stands out as one of those in which the distinctive peculiarities are strongly marked. They might be considered the aristocrats in the world of wasps, their habits of reposeful meditation and their calm, unhurried ways being far removed from the nervous manners of the Pompilidæ or the noisy, tumultuous life of Bembex. Their intelligence is shown by their reluctance to betray their nests, and by their uneasiness at any slight change in the objects that surround them. It is not necessary to attempt to catch them or to make threatening gestures, in order to arouse their sense of danger. If you are sitting quietly by a nest when the wasp opens her door in the morning she will notice you at once, and will probably drop out of sight as thoughshe resented your intrusion into her privacy. After a little she will come up again and will learn to tolerate you, but at the least movement on your part, almost at the winking of an eyelid, she will disappear.ill142

NEST OF CERCERIS NIGRESCENS

NEST OF CERCERIS NIGRESCENS

NEST OF CERCERIS NIGRESCENS

Our four representatives of this genus all prey upon beetles that are injurious to vegetation, and therefore deserve the gratitude of agriculturists. Nigrescens, with her pale grayish bands, is a very trying wasp to deal with. We had seen her flying about in the garden for weeks before we succeeded in tracking her home, and when we did succeed she was so late about getting up in the morning, stayed away from home so many hours at a time, and went to bed so early in the afternoon, that we were not well repaid for watching her nest all day. Fumipennis, large and handsome, with a broad yellow band at the front of the abdomen, is another wasp that has noregard for the convenience of the people who are watching her. You may sit by her big open hole for hours without seeing her, and when she comes she drops in so suddenly that, unless you are very much on your guard, you are not sure even then what she is. Clypeata and deserta are better subjects for study.

The nests of our species are all deep, tortuous, and very difficult to excavate. We have never succeeded in finding their pockets; and yet, for various reasons, we feel perfectly certain that all of them are like C. ornata in provisioning, successively, a number of cells which lead out of the main gallery. When one of these cells is filled with food, and the egg deposited, it is probably closed up, and thus separated from the runway. From our experience late in the season with the nests of another wasp, we are inclined to think that we made a mistake in looking for pockets at the lower end of the tunnel. Had we searched higher up, at the point of the curve, we might have found them, the lower part of the gallery probably beingdesigned merely for a dwelling-place for the mother of the family.ill143

CERCERIS CLYPEATA

CERCERIS CLYPEATA

CERCERIS CLYPEATA

But although we did not get distinct pockets, there was, in at least one nest, a supply of food that would have far exceeded the wants of a single larva. We did not succeed in finding eggs on different groups of beetles; but from a nest into which the wasp was still carrying food we took a half-grown larva which was identified as being hers. The fact, too, that a wasp occupies a nest for so long a time as ten days or two weeks points to the conclusion that she uses it for a number of eggs which are laid at intervals.

Cerceris digs her nest, deep as it is, all at once. In this she is a contrast to her near relatives of the genus Philanthus, who busy themselves for an hour or so every morning with fresh excavations.

On the eighth of July the weather was so warm and bright that we went down to the garden at half past eight o’clock, knowing that it was rather early, but hoping that the hot sunshine would tempt the wasps to industry. We had walked up and down several times, when suddenly, right in the pathway, a nest appeared. A great quantity of loose earth had been taken out and heaped up, probably on the preceding day, and in the midst of this a little hole had been opened since wepassed before. The place looked so promising that we sat down to watch it, and a few minutes later we were rewarded by a glimpse of some antennæ down the gallery, and then a little face with yellow markings appeared but quickly vanished. Now followed a very coquettish performance. The wasp came slowly creeping up again and again, only to drop out of sight as soon as she had reached the opening. After a time she grew bolder, and sat in her doorway, twitching her head this way and that in a very expressive manner, as though she were planning the work of the day; but it was plain that although she was up early, business cares were not weighing heavily upon her mind, for forty minutes passed before she came out of the nest, and after making three or four circles about the spot, flew away.

How much livelier and more interesting it would have been if we could have followed her! We tried to guess at what she was doing, and imagined her hunting industriously. After fifteen or twenty minutes it seemed to us that she must have caught something, and that she was surely returning. Most probably she was not working at all, but was breakfasting leisurely and exchanging compliments with her neighbors; for when she did come home after keeping us waiting for an hour and a half, she brought nothing with her, and seemedquite unconscious of the fact that greater things had been expected of her.

We had placed a stone upon a dead leaf near by, to mark the neighborhood of the nest, thinking that even a Cerceris could not object to so simple an arrangement of natural objects; but our wasp noticed it at once, and evidently with much suspicion and disapproval. She began by circling several times just above it. Then she alighted on it and examined it carefully, walking over it, and creeping underneath, perhaps to see whether it in any way menaced the safety of her nest, perhaps as the completion of a locality study made the day before. She then rose on her wings, and after a little more circling, dropped suddenly into her hole.

So far we had not been getting on very rapidly, but from this time things took a turn. Cerceris is never in a hurry, and yet she may be relied upon to do a certain amount of work every day. The one that we were now watching had probably come back for a final look at her newly made nest before beginning to provision it; for she soon reappeared, and this time really went to work, since in forty minutes she brought home a beetle which she carried by the snout, venter up, in her mandibles, supporting it with the second pair of legs while flying. She was much annoyed at our presence, and circledabout as before. Twice she alighted near by, and walked around for a few minutes, and when she did this all her feet came down to the ground, the beetle being allowed to hang loosely. At last she made the best of a bad matter, and went in. The rest of the morning was occupied with hunting, the capture of each beetle taking about forty-five minutes. Every time that she came home she spent fifteen or twenty minutes in the nest.

This species soon became very common, and for two weeks scarcely a morning passed without our finding at least one newly-made nest. The study of clypeata, however, consumes a great deal of time. For example, we found, one morning, two nests within six inches of each other. It turned out afterward that these were inhabited by two different wasps; but at the moment we supposed that one of them had been dug and deserted and then a second one made, and wishing to know which one was occupied we resolved to watch and see. After waiting for three hours we saw one wasp returning; but upon noticing us she veered off and began to circle about. She was heavily laden, and her burden, instead of being supported by the second pair of legs, as is sometimes the case, hung down under the thorax and abdomen. After a moment she alighted on a plant near by, and seemed to consider the situation, then circled a little more, andflew away, remaining out of sight for fifteen minutes, then another return, more circlings and hesitations. She seemed to feel the weight of the beetle now, and alighted frequently on the ground and walked about; yet she would not go in, so reluctant was she to betray her nest. In this way she kept us waiting for a whole hour, although we were not very near to her, and were as still as statues. At last we retreated, and stood as far back as we could and still keep the hole in view. She now came closer, and, after hanging poised on her wings for a moment, dropped into her nest.

We once found a nest of this species in process of construction. A large heap of fresh earth had been pushed out, which entirely covered the spot; but at intervals there were upheavals from below which betrayed the presence of the wasp. When we saw it first it was half past eight o’clock, and we judged, from what had been accomplished, that she must have been at work at least an hour. It was half past nine before the excavation was complete. We had not been certain, up to this time, as to what we were watching; but now we had the pleasure of seeing her open her doorway from below and stand in the entrance while she washed her face with her fore feet, like a cat. When they rest at the mouth of the hole the first legs, which are yellow, are bowed in a semicircleon each side of the yellow face, the distal joints being bent up so that the wasps seem to be standing on their elbows. This attitude, which is often seen in Bembex spinolæ, gives them a delightfully amusing, bow-legged appearance. They usually open their nests in the morning at about nine o’clock,—a little earlier or later according to the time at which the sun strikes the spot. Then they spend from forty minutes to an hour in taking a survey, the least movement on the part of a watcher causing them to drop out of sight as if the earth had given way beneath them. Sometimes there is a little way-station an inch or two within the tunnel, and the wasp falls back only to this point, and here she may be seen, if one peeps in cautiously, either quietly awaiting the retreat of the intruder, or, perhaps, performing her toilet in a leisurely and elegant manner.

Whenever she leaves her nest she makes three or four rapid circles around the spot to freshen her memory of the locality. The most thorough study that we saw made by clypeata was in the case of the wasp mentioned before, that was so long in carrying her beetle in because of our being on the ground. When she finally did go in she stayed only an instant—just long enough to deposit her load—and then came out and spent a long time in an investigation of all the surrounding objects,flying in and out among the plants, now high, now low, and circling again and again around the spot. It looked as though she had been puzzled and disturbed by the presence of unaccustomed things. As soon as the survey was over she went inside and closed the door, as though its object had been not so much to strengthen her memory as to correct former impressions.

The work of bringing in beetles goes on very irregularly, and as a rule not more than two or three are stored in the course of a day. It is not unusual for clypeata to spend three or four hours away from home and then come back without anything; and often, even in the middle of the day, she passes an hour or two in the seclusion of her nest. We had several nests under observation for a week at a time without ever once seeing the owners, although they were evidently occupied, since they were sometimes open and sometimes closed. The outer entrance is always left open when the wasp goes away, although possibly access to the pockets may be barred below; but when she enters she closes the door unless she means to come out again at once. The closing is sometimes effected by pushing the earth up backwards, with the end of the abdomen; but the hole is rather too large for this method, and more frequently the wasp comes up head first, carrying a load of earth in her frontlegs. This is placed just within and to one side of the entrance, and then more armfuls are brought up, until, after two or three trips, the opening is entirely filled.

We once captured the wasp in a bottle, as she returned, loaded, to the nest. She dropped the beetle, but soon picked it up again and stung it vigorously,with intention, as the French say, first under the neck, and then further back, behind the first pair of legs. After this it was dropped while the wasp fluttered about for a few minutes, but it was then picked up again, and stung as before. We both saw this operation repeated in exactly the same way, four different times, with intervals of five or six minutes between.

In a nest which we excavated after watching it for nine days, we found nothing until we had gone six inches down, and at this point the tunnel was lost; but mixed with the crumbly earth that we took out of the hole, we found eight beetles and a half-grown larva of clypeata. The destruction of this nest was accomplished one morning, and when we came back to the spot twenty-four hours later we found that a new one had been made close by, doubtless by the same individual. We had expected to find her bringing beetles and dropping them foolishly on the ground like Paul Marchal’s Cerceris ornata, and were gratified that she showed an advancein intelligence over that species, although to be sure she would have been still wiser had she chosen an entirely new neighborhood. Another individual was so much disturbed by our scrutiny that she dropped her beetle at the entrance to her nest. She did not pick it up again and utilize it, although it lay for three days in the dust at the threshold.

As to the condition of the beetles stored by clypeata: in the first nest that we opened we found eight, seven of which were dead, while the eighth, which we had just seen stung several times, was alive, but died on the following day. The second nest gave us five beetles, all of them dead and dry. In the other nests that we opened we found nothing, though we knew that the beetles were there had we only been skillful enough to discover them.

Of Cerceris deserta, which closely resembles clypeata, but appears later in the season, we had only a single example. We chanced to see her dropping into a crevice among some lumps of earth, and at first could scarcely believe that this was the dwelling-place of a wasp, as there was nothing whatever about it to indicate a nest; and even after we had removed the rough pieces of earth above, we could see nothing of the loose material that must have been carried out.

She was much like clypeata in her manners, with thesame habit of surveying the world from her doorway, and manifesting the same annoyance at our presence when she was returning to the nest; but she carried in more beetles in the course of the day and worked much more rapidly. Between nine and eleven o’clock one morning she brought in five loads, and some of the journeys occupied only ten minutes.

ill153

CERCERIS DESERTA: LOCALITY STUDY BEFORE LEAVING NEST

CERCERIS DESERTA: LOCALITY STUDY BEFORE LEAVING NEST

CERCERIS DESERTA: LOCALITY STUDY BEFORE LEAVING NEST

The first time that she found us sitting by her nest she circled about for nearly an hour, seeming unable to make up her mind to enter. At length we withdrew a little way, but still her suspicions were not entirelyallayed; and after a further study of the situation she dropped, not into her own nest, but into a large cricket hole near by. Taken aback by this manœuvre, and thinking that perhaps we had a second individual to deal with, we stealthily approached, and peering in, could see the cricket inside, the wasp having slipped beyond. It did not seem possible that the little creature could be endeavoring to deceive us, and yet what other explanation could be offered for her conduct? We again took up our distant position, and after ten minutes more had the satisfaction of seeing the wasp slip out of the false nest and drop instantly into the true one. After a little she became quite accustomed to us, and entered her nest without the least delay.

The prey of deserta is held in the mandibles, and while we were watching her she did not support it with the second legs, even when flying.

Philanthus punctatus is a pretty little yellow-banded species much resembling Cerceris in appearance. The nest consists of a main gallery with pockets leading from it, each pocket being stored with one egg and enough bees to nourish a single larva. When the wasps emerge from the cocoon they find themselves in the company of their nearest relatives and in possession of a dwelling-place, and they all live together for a time before startingout independently to seek their fortunes. On the fifth of August we discovered on the island a happy family of this kind, consisting of three brothers and four sisters, the females, with their bright yellow faces and mandibles, being handsomer than the males. They seemed to be on the most amicable terms with each other, their only trouble being that while they were all fond of looking out, the doorway was too small to hold more than one at a time. The nest was opened in the morning at about nine o’clock, and during the next thirty or forty minutes their comical little faces would appear, one after another, each wasp enjoying the view for a few minutes with many twitchings of the head, and then retreating to make way for another, perhaps in response to some hint from behind. Then one by one they would come out, circle about the spot, and depart, sometimes leaving one of their number to keep house all day alone. They usually left the hole open; but when there was a wasp within, it was soon closed from below. During this playtime period they did not return until they were ready to settle down for the night, the first one coming home at half after two or three o’clock, and the others arriving at intervals, none of them staying out later than five. Most commonly they found the right spot without trouble, scratched open the hole, and then either closedit behind them or stood waiting in the doorway for the next arrival; but occasionally they had difficulty in locating the nest, and worked at two or three different places before finding it.

We kept these wasps under close observation, often watching the nest from the moment it was opened in the morning until it was closed at night. On the twelfth of August, a week from the time that we first saw them, one of the females felt the responsibilities of life settling down upon her. At half after four in the afternoon she began to enlarge the nest, and worked with a great deal of energy for forty minutes. After a long disappearance within the hole she would come up backwards, kicking behind her a quantity of earth which was not only taken outside, but was then spread out far and wide. She worked with the front pair of legs, which were curved inward, after the manner of Bembex; and when a pebble or some such object came in her way she either dragged it to a distance with her mandibles or pushed it before her with her head in a way quite peculiar to herself. In distributing the earth that was taken out, she went five and one half inches from the nest—a distance which is much greater than is common among wasps, but which accords well with the habits of punctatus, since she continues the work of excavation from day to day.ill157

PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUS

PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUS

PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUS

On August thirteenth, at half after eight in the morning, we found that a second female, perhaps inspired by the example of her sister, had made a new nest within two inches of the first one, and had flown away, leaving it open. Presently the other wasps began to appear, one after the other, in their doorway. Two of the males flew away, and one of the females, doubtless the one that we had seen digging the night before, began to work afresh at making the nest larger. Probably she was excavating a pocket for the reception of an egg, and the amount of labor required was enormously increased by the great length (about twenty-two inches) of the main gallery by which the displaced earth must be carried out. She worked for an hour, and in spreading the dirt about, inadvertently filled in the opening of the second nest. At length she flew away.

At ten o’clock a female arrived carrying a bee, and tried to find nest No. 2. She came to the wrong place, and worked about, here and there, for some minutes, holding the bee under the thorax, clasped by the secondpair of legs. Being unsuccessful, she dropped her burden, and flew away for a few minutes. While she was gone we removed a leaf that had fallen over her nest, and on her return she at once descended upon the right spot, and began to scratch open the entrance, the bee being kicked backward with the rejected earth. When the way was clear, however, she picked it up, brought it toward the hole, dropped it, ran in and out, brought it nearer, ran in again, and turning around in the tunnel, seized the bee in her mandibles and pulled it down. This performance was due to the accidental obstruction of the gallery, for we afterward found that punctatus ordinarily flies directly into her nest, or, when it is closed, pauses on the wing to scratch an opening with the first legs. The bee is pushed backward a little as she goes in, but does not often project from under her abdomen.

At fifteen minutes after ten the worker from nest No. 1 brought in a bee, and from that time the two worked industriously. They showed some individuality in their ways, for No. 2 always closed her door when she went away, and never circled at all, while No. 1 invariably circled before leaving, and always left her nest open. To be sure, there was a female left on guard, so that perhaps she did not feel the need of caution.

Our wasps had not far to go for their victims. Forty feet away, on the eastern side of the island, was a steep declivity, and here, in the soft crumbly soil, was a great Halictus settlement. No prettier sight can be imagined than is presented by this colony on every sunny summer day. The whole bank is riddled with nests, and at the entrance of each stands a female bee, her tiny head exactly filling the opening. The bees are constantly arriving, laden with pollen, whereupon the sentinels politely back inward to make way for them. Into this scene of contented industry descends the ravaging Philanthus, taking guards and workers alike.

On the afternoon of the fourteenth of August our two wasps were in the full tide of affairs. No. 1 took in eleven bees within two hours, but her record was somewhat confused, as two other females were going in and out at the same time. We felt sure that neither of these was hunting, but one of them shared in the labor of the nest by helping with the work of excavation.

No. 2, however, was alone, so that we could keep a definite account of her comings and goings. We watched her from half past one until five, at which hour she came home without a load, and at once closed the nest for the night, after having stored thirteen bees in three hours and nine minutes. In some cases the capture ofthe bee occupied only one, two, or three minutes, while at other times she was gone much longer. At each return she stayed only an instant—just long enough to deposit the bee—inside the nest, and then spent a minute in carefully closing the hole. The wasps that were going in and out of nest No. 1 sometimes closed it when they went away, but this was done in an untidy fashion, quite different from the nicety and precision of No. 2.

At half after five o’clock the wasp that had been digging for some little time at nest No. 1 flew to nest No. 2, opened it, and attempted to enter, but was quickly driven out by the owner. She then dug a little in several other places, finally returning to sleep in the family home. On the next day we found that No. 2 was tolerating in her nest one of the females that had not yet begun to hunt, but whether it was the one she had rejected the night before or the fourth member of the sisterhood, we could not tell. On the eighteenth, three days later, the wasp had left this temporary home and made a nest for herself four feet away on the hillside. The males were still living in the first nest with two females.

When the weather was cold and cloudy punctatus remained closely housed within the nest, or, at most, came out to do an hour’s digging, and then disappeared. The warmer the weather, and the more brilliant thesunshine, the more rapidly they worked. When leaving the nest they would often creep out and walk around it three or four times before rising on their wings, and even then would sometimes alight once or twice before flying away. The males, especially, liked to stand about for a time, watching their more industrious sisters at their work. The females usually began the day with digging, and frequently closed it, toward night, in the same way.

In order to see the method of stinging, we at one time provided ourselves with a number of bees, and putting one of them into a bottle, introduced a wasp. She seized it almost immediately, with great vigor, and stung it once, under the neck, and then dragged it up and down the bottle by one antenna which was held in the mandibles. After a moment she shifted it and held it with the second legs in the usual way. We now put in another bee, which she also caught, stung in the same place, and then dropped without relaxing her hold of the first one. As she seemed to have nothing further to show us we released her, and after circling a little she took into her nest the bee that she was carrying.

In our next experiment we used a larger glass, thinking that with more space we might see malaxation. The instant that the wasp was introduced she grasped thebee with one rapid powerful motion, and stung it just under the neck as before. Then holding it with the second legs she began to fly about in the glass. We now introduced another bee, whereupon the first one was relinquished, and the second was treated in exactly the same way. The stinging was the beginning and the end of the operation, and when we released her she at once took the bee into the nest. There was no malaxation outside, and certainly there was none within, as was shown by the rapidity with which the wasps issued from the nest after storing the bees. We were successful in getting the wasps to sting only when we tried the experiment with those that were hunting. When those that had not yet begun to store their nests were put into the glass they paid no attention to the bees.

The victim of the sting of punctatus is killed at once. Life is extinct from the instant that the stroke is given. This is true also of the honey-bee that is the victim of Fabre’s Philanthus apivorus; but the explanation that he gives of the action of his wasp in thus dealing sudden death instead of paralyzing its foe—that the honey must be sucked out of the bee before it can be safely used as food for the larva—does not hold good in our case, since the honey that Halictus carries to mix with the pollen upon which her offspring are fed, is not removed.

ill163

NEST OF PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUSA-B, 3½ inches; B-C, 5 inches; C-D, 14 inches; D-E, 8 inches

NEST OF PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUSA-B, 3½ inches; B-C, 5 inches; C-D, 14 inches; D-E, 8 inches

NEST OF PHILANTHUS PUNCTATUS

A-B, 3½ inches; B-C, 5 inches; C-D, 14 inches; D-E, 8 inches

As time went on we found on the island two other Philanthus colonies, although that is rather too large a word to apply to them, since one consisted of four nests and the other of only two. When we came to excavate the nests of this species we were greatly astonished at the length of the gallery, and not until then did we properly appreciate the industry of these little wasps. It is no small undertaking to follow one of their tunnels for twenty-two inches, even when, as in this case, the greater part of it is parallel to the surface of the ground. We did not find distinct pockets, as the soil was very crumbly and fell in as we worked, but we came upon clumps of bees an inch or so to one side of the gallery and about three inches apart, with larvæ in different stages of development. In one nest we found twenty-six bees intwo clumps, some of them half-eaten, and some of them fresh, but all quite dead. We have no doubt that punctatus completely provisions one pocket and closes the opening from it into the gallery, before she starts another, making a series of six or eight independent cells. The provision for one larva is probably twelve or fourteen bees, the capture of which, in good weather, would be a fair day’s work.

That the males do not always stay on in their ancestral home is shown by an observation that we made on the only occasion that we ever saw this species in our garden. Nothing was stirring at half past three o’clock in the afternoon, and we had given up work and started for home, when, in going up an inclined part of the field, we noticed something in motion within a ragged-edged hole which ran obliquely into the ground. It seemed strange that a wasp should be beginning its nest at so late an hour; but a wasp it was, as we could plainly see when we took an attitude sufficiently humble. It was loosening the earth with its mandibles, and then pushing it backward with its hind legs and abdomen. We had scarcely settled down to watching it when a second one of the same species appeared, and with a good deal of fuss and flutter began to dig its hole close by. The spot chosen by this second one proved unsatisfactory, andanother beginning was made in a new place. Again something was wrong, nor was a third choice any better. At last, however, the work was started in earnest, and might have been carried to a conclusion if we had not caught the little creature to satisfy a suspicion that had been growing in our minds. Yes, we were right. The worker was not a female making a nest for the rearing of her young, but a male punctatus, preparing a shelter for the night.

In the mean time the first wasp had pushed back such a quantity of earth that the hole was entirely closed, but every few minutes he came backing out to clear the way. At the end of half an hour all became quiet. The door remained closed, and doubtless the wasp was fast asleep. Putting a blade of grass and then an inverted tumbler over the nest, we left him for the night.

On removing the glass at half past seven the next morning, we found the nest open but the wasp not visible. At half past eight the head appeared just inside the hole, the long antennæ twitching now to this side, now to that, as if an inspection were being made. Soon the head came out. The wasp stood for some minutes making a survey, looking to right and left with lively jerks of the body. Then, apparently concluding that the day was not far enough advanced, he came out, whirledaround, and ran head-first into the nest. He probably took another nap, for all was quiet until just before ten o’clock, when the antennæ appeared again. The survey was taken as before, first from within and then with the head in view. At last he flew out, and making three circles, each one wider than the last, about the place, flew away. He stayed out all day, and had not returned at half past three in the afternoon; but on going down at half past four we found that he had gone in and closed the door from below.

It is clear, then, that these males do not construct a new lodging every night, but return to the same spot to sleep. Other wasps creep into crevices. We have often found them, in the morning, in the holes of the posts of our cottage porch; but we are glad to be able to put it down to the credit of one male that he has sufficient foresight and industry to provide a sleeping-place, and sufficient intelligence to return to the spot when the declining sun warns him that evening is approaching.

While punctatus was in the height of its activity we found another species, P. ventilabris, taking bees of several genera and species into a ground nest. She also carried her prey with her second pair of legs, and whenever she left her nest she closed the door. She was a shy little thing, and did not approve of our interest inher. At one time, being startled by some movement on our part, she dropped her load and flew away. We placed the bee upon the closed nest, and when she came back with another, she paused and looked at it, took in the one she was carrying, and then returned for number one. This was placed on the threshold while she entered and turned around, and was then pulled in. Some wasps, notably C. ornata and our little tornado, refuse to take in their prey, even if they have caught it themselves, excepting in a regular succession of events; and thus the more reasonable conduct of ventilabris gains in interest.

To the west of Milwaukee, across the valley of the Menominee, rises a sandy hilltop which is a little insect kingdom by itself. Ants of course abound, and the gentle little solitary bees, with their loads of pollen, may be seen everywhere, seeming to melt into the ground, so quickly and quietly do they open their burrows. Here Oxybelus plys her trade of fly-catching, and graceful Ammophila dances with her shadow over the sunny ground, while Cerceris rests in her doorway with an air of leisurely superiority to the vulgar cares of life; and here, one day in early July, a sudden access of energy seemed to strike Aphilanthops frigidus, a wasp which we had found a year before taking in the wingless queens of ants. All at once they were digging everywhere, bitingand scratching with great energy, and soon disappearing in the depths of their sandy tunnels. So deep is their primary gallery that even in this easy medium it takes them the best part of a day to get it ready for storing; but once finished it doubtless serves as a home through the season. It has at the entrance a little cup-shaped vestibule where the wasp drops the ant as she enters, running out of sight herself, and then, after she has turned around, coming back to pull it within. This nest is a very difficult one to excavate neatly, as the sand falls at the slightest touch.

A day or two after we had seen frigidus making her residential arrangements, we found twenty-five or thirty within a few feet of each other, working with great ardor at carrying in queens, the doors being left closed or open according to individual judgment. The steadiest workers brought one every forty minutes, scarcely pausing inside the nest, but others made long stays within, leaving the door closed. The ants were carried under the body with all the legs folded around them, but they were heavy things, and were often dropped as the wasp flew across the field, giving opportunities for robbery that were promptly taken advantage of. We picked up one of these ants and placed it in the doorway of a wasp that had just gone in. She came up twice, looked at it, and backed down again; but the third time she first touched it, then seized it and took it below. From another wasp that was just entering we took the ant she had dropped and moved it half an inch away. When she had turned and come up for it, she seemed surprised, came out and looked about, found it and dropped it in the doorway, going in herself to turn around as before. We seized this chance to move it again, and again she came out, found it, took it back, and dropped it. This was repeated five times, but when she took it in for the sixth time, after dropping it, she whirled around and picked it up so quickly that our malice was foiled.

ill169

APHILANTHOPS GATHERING ANTS

APHILANTHOPS GATHERING ANTS

APHILANTHOPS GATHERING ANTS

.

We were puzzled by the actions of a wasp that approached her nest again and again, but always circled away without entering, until looking closely we saw that she was pursued by two tiny flies. When she alighted and walked about awhile with her ant tucked under the third leg on one side, the flies alighted also and walked about behind her. In the end she evaded them by a sudden drop into her hole.

A wasp now came circling along with an ant in her grasp, and settled down between two small weeds that grew about four inches apart. She stood quiet a moment and then began to dig, but had evidently struck the wrong spot, for after a moment she moved and triedanother place. Not finding the entrance, she rose and flew close under one of the plants and began to scratch again, but still in vain. For ten minutes she persisted, keeping within a few inches of the spot, and holding on to the ant all the time, although it was dreadfully in her way as she walked about. Then she dropped it and began to dig more vigorously, dividing her attention between the two spots she had attempted at first. She seemed troubled at having to leave the ant, and often picked it up and tried to hold it while she worked. Once in a while she would take it with her, and after circling about the spot would disappear, but in a few minutes she would return. It seemed to us that two little plants growing near together must have been her landmarks, and that probably she had been deceived by the likeness that those before us bore to the ones near her nest. Again and again she seemed to hesitate and think the matter over, but gradually one of the holes absorbed her more and more. At the end of an hour she was out of sight in it, and had carried her ant down, although she was still kicking out sand. It was evident that her memory had played her false, and that she had either covered her hole so neatly that she could not find the spot herself, or had missed the place entirely. She had accommodated herself to circumstances pretty well,although she ought to have realized earlier that it would be easier to dig one nest than two.

We now tried to excavate a nest, but could not follow the tunnel, although we found clumps of ants at different levels, some with larvæ feeding on them. The deepest were eighteen inches down. Hoping to secure a guide, we borrowed an ant as it was dropped in the doorway and tied a thread to it. The wasp pulled it in and took it part way down with this attachment; but before any great depth was reached, the thread was seemingly bitten off, as we found the free end without the ant. A second attempt brought no better results.

So long as we were quiet the wasps did not notice us, but after being disturbed they became shy and circled about a good deal before entering. Some of the ants were completely paralyzed, while others moved their abdomens, legs, and mouth parts. All through the morning, the whole place was in a bustle, but when we came back, after eating our luncheon in a shady spot, quiet reigned; the colony seemed asleep, and although we waited for an hour not a wasp showed herself.

The ants that these wasps were bringing all had wings. The European genus Fertonius takes worker ants which can be picked up anywhere; but so far as we know, these queens leave the nest only at the time of theirnuptial flight, after which the wings are lost. How then are they captured? Can it be that the wasps, though not much larger than their prey, descend into the home of the ants, bearding the lions in their den, and carrying off their young queens by force of arms? This smacks of heroism.

Much interested in the matter, we carefully examined the ant-hills of the neighborhood. Those on top of the hill had openings too small to admit frigidus, supposing she had wanted to enter, but down on the roadside below we found some larger doorways and sat down beside them. We had scarcely arrived when a frigidus appeared on the scene, alighting six feet away. That she should have come hunting so soon seemed almost too good to be true, but she certainly was not doing anything else. She did not dig, nor feed on the clover, nor circle about as though looking for her nest, but began to clean and brush herself assiduously. Then she climbed a tall grass blade, and swinging at the top went through some curious gymnastic performances. Then she brushed herself again, drawing her third legs over the sides of her abdomen. This went on from moment to moment, until half an hour had passed, and more than once the painful suspicion crossed our minds that this was some trifling male putting in the hours between breakfast andluncheon. One encouraging fact cheered us: aimless as the wasp appeared she was slowly drawing nearer and nearer to the nest; and at last, alighting on the top of a weed close by, she crouched there in a most peculiar attitude, and gazed intently at the opening. Absorbed and tense, she looked about to leap upon her prey; but after a time she relaxed and moved about a little. Presently she came close to the entrance and seemed on the point of going in; but the ants were swarming up and down, and we thought that perhaps that step required more courage than she possessed. At any rate, she did not enter, but hung about for some minutes and then flew away.

Was this a young wasp out on her first hunt? What strange antiphonal desires must have stirred at the sight of the nest, and how mysterious was the power that drew her to it! Was there in her brain any image of the queen she must seek and sting and carry away from among her guards and subjects? Or had she perhaps already achieved the adventure, and did the memory of the bitter nips that little ant jaws can give make it a harder task than it was the first time, when she risked the ills she knew not of? That she hesitated and carried on the work reluctantly seemed to show that her flesh was weak and needed the prick of conscience to drive it on.Had we here then the small beginnings of moral sense and perception of duty? Can it be that of such humble origin is the power that “doth preserve the stars from wrong”?

We went on with these meditations for several days while lingering, with gradually diminishing hopefulness, over one ant-hill after another. The wasps were carrying in winged queens by the score, but they did not come our way to find them; and although we ranged about widely, we failed to see the capture. Occasionally we met a frigidus hunting, running about on the ground and poking her head, not only into ant holes, but into holes of all sorts, and as we sometimes saw young queens (wingless however) starting to dig their nests, we thought these might be the object of the search. The weather was cold and windy, most unpropitious for swarming, and yet frigidus was working as briskly as ever; so that we began to feel sure that she could not depend upon meeting the queens outside the nest, but must enter to get them. Just as this point we received a letter from Mr. William M. Wheeler, well known as an authority on ants, saying that he felt very sure that the wasp could not extract the queens from the nest, but must find them running on the ground, just after the nuptial flight, before they dug their holes and started their colonies.Respecting this opinion, but still feeling unconvinced, we caught a wasp in a glass, and carrying it to an ant-hill, inverted it so that she was confined just over the entrance. After buzzing up and down for a moment, she alighted and walked calmly into the hole; but a fraction of a second later she came rushing madly out again, pursued by the most furious lot of ants that ever defended the home city against invasion. Down tumbled our air castles about courage and duty, for however frigidus gets her queens, it is not in that way. We have not yet seen the meeting and the capture, but hope that sometime we may be lucky enough to be on the right spot at the right time.

Back to IndexNext