Wasps, Bees, and Ants 



497 



only in rare cases see even the commencement of the life of the next; the 

 progeny for the benefit of which they labor with unsurpassable skill and 

 industry being unknown to them. Were such a solicitude displayed by 

 ourselves we should connect it with a high sense of duty, and poets and 

 moralists would vie in its laudation. But having dubbed ourselves the 

 higher animals, we ascribe the eagerness of the solitary wasp to an impulse 

 or instinct, and we exterminate their numerous species from the face f the 

 earth for ever, without even seeking to make a prior acquaintance with them. 

 Meanwhile our economists and moralists devote their volumes to admira- 

 tion of the progress of the civilization that effects this destruction and toler- 

 ates this negligence." 



Sharp divides the solitary wasps, according to their habits, roughly into 

 four groups: (i) those that form no special receptacles (nests) for their young, 

 but are either of parasitic or subparasitic habits or take advantage of the 

 abodes of other insects, holes, etc.; (2) constructors of cells of clay formed 

 into pottery by the saliva of the insect, 

 and by drying; (3) excavators of burrows 

 in the ground; (4) makers of tunnels in 

 wood or stems of plants. Several species 

 make use of both of the last two methods. 



Some of the parasitic wasps dig into 

 the ground until they find some underground 

 insect, usually a larva, for example a beetle- 

 grub, which they sting (paralyze) and on 

 which they then deposit an egg. There 

 is no attempt to make a nest or to remove 

 the prey from its position as found. The 

 hatching wasp larva feeds on the grub but 

 in such a way as not to kill it before its 

 own development is complete. A common 

 parasitic wasp of this habit is Tiphia inornaia, 

 f inch long, shining black, which paralyzes 

 white grubs, the larvae of June-beetles. 

 Other allied species, some yellow and black 

 and much larger, prey on other larvae of 

 Scarabaeid beetles From the nests of other 



wasps, and of both solitary and communal bees, have been bred several 

 kinds of solitary wasps which live either parasitically or as guests (inqui- 

 lines) in these nests. If guests, their larvae feed on the stored food of the 

 host; if parasites, they feed on the actual larval or adult bodies of their 

 hosts themselves. Interesting wasps living habitually in nests of other 

 wasps or bees are the Mutillidas, popularly known as velvet-ants, COW- 



FIG. 699. A cow-killer, or wingless 

 wasp, Spharophthalma similima, 

 female. (After Lugger; natural 

 size indicated by line.) 



