ISELY: EUMENIU^ OF KANSAS. 295 



alighted in the middle of the road, ran into the weeds to her 

 burrow and entered. A minute later she came out, not back- 

 wards as do the members of the genus Odynerus, but head 

 foremost. She always came out in this manner. She walked 

 deliberately to the open road before she took flight. Again in 

 twelve minutes she came, unburdened as before, and repeated 

 her visit to the nest, staying a minute. In fifteen minutes she 

 returned with a caterpillar. In my eagerness to observe every 

 movement I moved forward slightly and she seemed to notice 

 me. She poised a moment, then flew high in the air and out 

 of sight. She returned in fifteen minutes, but without prey. 

 This time she stayed about three minutes. She again flew 

 away and had not returned by six o'clock, when I left for camp. 



Madam Ptcrochilvs was filling her nest with sand when I 

 returned the next morning at 8:30 o'clock. With her front 

 feet she would vigorously scrape together a heap of loose sand 

 near her burrow, and then push it with her front feet into the 

 entrance. After pushing in several heaps she would go down, 

 no doubt to press it in place more firmly. In less than five 

 minutes the burrow was practically filled. I took her then for 

 identification. No water had been used in closing the burrow. 



I then opened the nest. It was excavated in very sandy soil. 

 The burrow led to two horizontal galleries, one of which termi- 

 nated in a single cell and the other in three. The main bur- 

 row was two and three-fourths inches deep and seven-six- 

 teenths of an inch in diameter — almost twice the diameter of 

 the burrow of 0. dorsalis, a wasp of nearly the same size. Tlie 

 direction of the burrow was obliquely downward, with but one 

 break in its course. None of the cells were in the direct line 

 of the main burrow, nor did any of them open directly into 

 the burrow. At its bottom the burrow branched abruptly into 

 two horizontal burrows leading in opposite directions. One 

 side burrow was only one inch long before it reached the 

 single cell. The other side burrow was two and one-fourth 

 inches long before it reached the first cell of the gallery. Whea 

 packed with sand the burrows were quite hard to follow. 



The cells were shaped like short casks, lying on their sides. 

 In the gallery with three cells they were arranged one behind 

 the other. The cells averaged three-fourths of an inch in 

 length by ten-sixteenths of an inch in diameter. The partitions 

 between them were of sand, and were from one-sixteenth to 



