382 WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER 



feeding it to the young, but whether this is the case or not can 

 be determined only by future observations. 



The behavior of Aphilanthops stands out in an interesting 

 light by comparison with that of the other genera of Philan- 

 thida?, Philanthus and Cerceris, which, unlike Aphilanthops are 

 represented by several species in Europe as well as in North 

 America. Fabre (1891) has given us a fascinating account of 

 Philanthus apivorus (=triangulum) , which preys on the honey 

 bee. He shows how this wasp kills the bee outright and then 

 gorges itself with the honey which it presses out of the body 

 of its victim. This extraordinary behavior he explains as a 

 necessary adaptation to the diet of the larva, as he found by 

 experiment that the insect in this stage thrives on nitrogenous 

 food but is poisoned if it eats honey. The great depth of the 

 nest of Ph. apivorus is given as one meter. The egg is laid on a 

 dead bee and recently killed bees are fed to the growing larva 

 from time to time after the manner of Bembex. Fabre also 

 made some observations on Ph. coronatus Fabr. and venustus 

 Rossi {-raptor Lep.) and found that the former provisions its 

 nest with larger, the latter with smaller bees of the genus Halic- 

 tus. He believes that in these cases also the honey is expressed 

 from the bodies of the victims, but this opinion has not been 

 confirmed. Ferton (1905) has also studied Ph. venustus and enu- 

 merates 14 different species of Halictus and one of Andrena 

 which he found in the nests. He calls attention to the depth 

 of the burrows but says nothing about the method of feeding 

 the larvae ; 



The only American Philanthus whose habits have been de- 

 scribed is Ph. punctatus Say. According to the Peckhams 

 (1898) this wasp nests in very small colonies and preys on bees 

 of the genus Halictus, which it kills outright, but it does not 

 malaxate them, nor express the honey from their bodies. The 

 main burrow of the nest reaches a length of 22 inches. The 

 following quotation shows that the method of rearing the young 

 is very different from that described by Fabre for Ph. apivorus: 

 ;l We did not find distinct pockets, as the soil was very crumbly 

 and fell in as we worked, but we came upon clumps of bees 

 an inch or so to one side of the gallery and about three inches 

 apart, with larvae in different stages of development. In one 

 nest we found 26 bees in two clumps, some of them half -eaten 



