166 C. H. TURNER. 



turning from the field, seem to experience no difficulty whatever in 

 locating their burrows. They carry their prey on the wing, usually 

 with comparative ease, hugging it tightly all the while, alight at the 

 brink of the hole and push it in ahead of them, holding it as they 

 lower it ; then they follow it into the hole, remain inside a few 

 seconds perhaps a half minute and then come backing out. 

 Sometimes the wasp soars away directly in quest of other game ; 

 at other times she sits down and washes her face for a moment, 

 then rises and poises on vibrating wings an inch or two above the 

 hole, turns around on the wing as if inspecting the site, then circles 

 about and flies away. She is calm, gentle, and composed in all the 

 maneuvers, betrays no nervousness, and wastes no time in bluster- 

 ing." Since I had read both of these accounts before making my 

 observations on the same species, I was surprised to find that wasps 

 coming from the field did sometimes have difficulty in finding their 

 nests. My wasps, when arriving laden from the field, sometimes 

 went direct to the nest and pushed the caterpillar in ; but usually 

 they did not. Frequently a wasp would examine the entrances to 

 several nests before entering one. At other times a wasp afoot 

 and awing would circle around and around for several minutes 

 before entering the nest. 



Movements as conspicuous as these, if performed by the wasps 

 they studied, could not have been overlooked by such keen ob- 

 servers as Isely and the Raus. Why should my wasps behave so 

 differently in this respect? I think I have the solution. In ar- 

 ranging mazes for experimental work, and in marking certain nests 

 with bits of tile and with nails, I was continually disfiguring the 

 ground. Since my wasps spent from ten minutes to more than 

 half an hour on each hunting trip, it is quite likely that during the 

 absence of a wasp the ground would be changed sufficiently to 

 confuse her. A careful consideration of the records of my first 

 afternoon's work confirms this opinion. Then the ground had not 

 been disfigured with pieces of apparatus. To see if the colony was 

 worth careful study, I made a few observations and marked a few 

 nests. In most of the records of that afternoon the caterpillar- 

 bearing wasps are described as going direct to their nests. Two 

 records tell a different story and those two' were connected with 



