WASPS, SOLITARY AND SOCIAL 



Oxybelus two hours to make her nest so that this one 

 must have been prepared the day before. 



The egg, which was laid just before nine o'clock on the 

 morning of August seventh, hatched at a little after nine 

 on the morning of August eighth. The larva began to 

 eat at once, and devoured all the inside of the thorax 

 and abdomen of the fly to which it was attached, in the 

 first twenty-four hours. On August twelfth it had 

 reached the sixth fly, and we supplied it with three more. 

 On August fourteenth these were gone, and we again 

 replenished its larder, this time with two flies. The larva 

 had partly eaten these when something went wrong. Its 

 appetite failed, and on August sixteenth it died. 



On further acquaintance this wasp lost none of her 

 charm, - - indeed, she gained in interest from the almost 

 human curiosity that she showed about the affairs of 

 other people. Where several were living close together 

 one of them would sometimes stop digging her own nest 

 to perch on a weed and watch the labor of another, and 

 we once saw an especially inquisitive character burrow 

 through the closed door and enter the home of her next- 

 door neighbor. 



We find but meagre notes on the genus Oxybelus. 

 Ashmead says that no observations have been made on 

 the American species, but that in Europe they are found 



78 . 



