52 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST 



precluded any theory of scent affording any aid to the wasp in reaching her bur- 

 row, and she certainly could see no landmark to assist her in steering her way. 



Once an active grasshopper came bounding across her path and forced a 

 change en route, a detour of a few inches. Later, another hopper, sitting in 

 the grass near her route caught sight of her as she toiled toward him. With 

 baleful eyes he glared at her, swung slowly about as she came closer and just 

 as she passed him made a short, spiteful spring directly at her, giving her a 

 violent kick and upsetting her completely. It was coarse comedy on his part, 

 but might have proved tragedy for her. She meekly righted herself and trudged 

 steadily on. Still further along, another wasp of the same species as herself 

 crossed her track at right angles just ahead of her. She saw the newcomer, 

 stopped short and flattened herself to the ground for a few seconds until her 

 fellow raider had passed on. 



At last, after crossing two lawns, two concrete walks leading to the houses 

 she had passed, and going some distance into a third lawn, making fully one 

 hundred feet of grass travel, she swung sharply at right angles and made a 

 rapid run of about two inches. She was all animation now, dropped her load, 

 jumped forward and seized in her jaws a pebble that lay before her. Its renv nal 

 disclosed an opening in the earth down which she instantly plunged, to reappear 

 almost as suddenly. The worm was grasped and dragged beneath the surface 

 quickly. Twice more she came to the top and, sad as it seems, was captured 

 the last time for the writer's cabinet. 



This wasp with her heavy load had travelled in all more than 300 feet. 

 had apparently lost her way at first yet had in some mysterious manner suc- 

 ceeded in steering herself with uncanny accuracy to her destination. How did 

 she do it? It is possible but not probable that she had already been over the 

 same route on foot and w^as merely following her own scent. But she appeared 

 to enter the lawn in a haphazard manner, and any well-laid plans she may have 

 had must have been much interfered with by the annoying wind as well as by 

 the unexpected obstacles she encountered along the way. The mouth of her 

 burrow was many feet from any prominent object that might have served as a 

 landmark to guide her, and for nearly half an hour she was involved in a grass 

 forest from which she could have seen but little of the outside world. All the 

 while she acted as if absorbed in the petty details of the journey, but she must, 

 in spite of this, have been feeling her way in some exceedingly definite direction 

 and this super-sense, call it instinct or what you will, brought her to precisely 

 the right spot. 



These facts are a transcript of notes that were continuously recorded w hile 

 following the wasp, and are neither coloured nor altered to make a good story. 



At the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, held at St. Louis, the Council unanimously elected Dr. C. J. S. 

 Bethune, Professor of Entomology at the Ontario Agricultural College, Guelph, 

 a Fellow Emeritus "in recognition of his long and faithful membership." 



Dr. Bethune has also been made an Honorary Life Member of the American 

 Association of Economic Entomologists "because of his long membership in 

 the Association and as a slight token of its appreciation of his work in Ento- 

 mology." 



