in] FOSSORES OR DIGGER-WASPS 25 



species that is most abundant; it may be found in 

 numbers on the blooms of stonecrop, gypsophila and 

 many other shallow flowers during July and August. 

 But it is when attending to the needs of her family 

 rather than to her own that she becomes most inter- 

 esting. The insect is about a quarter of an inch long, 

 and is black with several white spots along the sides 

 of the abdomen ; both in size and appearance she is 

 not at all unlike an ordinary house-fly, or any of the 



Fig. 3. Oxybelus unif/lumis 



% 



two-winged flies that are so persistently annoying to 

 human beings during the hot summer days ; and like 

 many of these last she has a covering of beautiful 

 glittering silver hairs all over her face. Moreover in 

 several of her habits she closely resembles the flies 

 which frequent hot, sandy places ; she sits basking on 

 the bare stones in the way that the flies so often do, 

 she flies in a very similar way, she turns her silvery 

 face towards the observer, or towards a fly that 



