Chapter II 



AMMOPHILA AND HER CATERPILLARS 



BEFORE we had worked long on our Vespa family 

 we were beguiled by tempting opportunities into 

 running after the solitary wasps. The solitaries, so far as 

 species are concerned, are immensely more numerous 

 than the socials ; but they have only two sexes, and the 

 males and females usually see but little of each other 

 after the mating is over, although we occasionally find 

 them living happily together until the end of the season. 

 In the early summer they begin to emerge from the nest 

 in which the eggs were laid the year before. Solitary in- 

 deed they come into the world, the generation that gave 

 them birth having perished in the fall. For a time their 

 career is one of unmixed pleasure, and yet, free and un- 

 guided though they are, basking in the sunshine, feeding 

 on the flowers, or sleeping at night under some sheltering 

 leaf, they are hourly acquiring experience, so that when 

 the cares of life descend upon them they are no longer 

 creatures of mere instinct. With these sobering cares an 



