CAREFUL MOTHERS 



with long, elastic strides, dragged its victim after it. The journey 

 was a long one. Often the hornet released its hold, and ran quickly 

 forwards, but it always returned and dragged the spider a little 

 further. At last the goal was reached: a hole leading down into 

 the earth. The hornet hurried into the burrow, saw that all was in 

 order, and dragged the spider after it. While so doing it was very 

 much on the alert. On another occasion I watched a hornet attempt- 

 ing to drag a spider into its burrow. Something, apparently, was not 

 as it should be; and as the hornet quickly ran back into the hole, 

 I looked more closely at the spider, and turned it over, but restored 

 it again to its proper position. The hornet appeared again, and 

 dragged the spider into the hole. I had intended to await any further 

 proceedings, but was called away, and when half an hour later I 

 returned to the hole, hornet and spider had disappeared, and in the 

 burrow itself, which I excavated, there was nothing to be seen. 

 The hole was not deep, and was wide at the surface. 



In this burrow the hornet lays its eggs on the body of its victim, 

 closes the entrance, and leaves the spot, in order to lay a second 

 egg in the same manner. After some days the larva creeps out 

 of the egg, and begins to eat the spider. The living meal lasts 

 until the larva has passed through all its moults and is ready 

 to pupate. 



Bates has a story of another hornet. The explorer had just landed 

 on a sandbank in the Amazon, in order to cook his mid-day meal, 

 when suddenly a wasp or hornet swooped on to his neck like a 

 stooping hawk. He started back, but he really had reason to thank 

 the hornet, since it had just espied a horse-fly or Mutiica, which 

 had settled on Bates's neck in order to suck his blood. The blood- 

 sucker was seized, and the hornet flew off", tenderly pressing its 

 booty to its breast. 



While most of the hornets excavate burrows in the earth in which 

 their larvae can mature, or make use of the deserted holes of frogs 

 or mice, the Potter-wasps or Mud-wasps make nests of clay, which 

 take the form of large grey balls, and hang from the twigs Hke fruit. 

 Inside these balls are the cells for the eggs and their food-supply, 

 mostly spiders. On the walls of the monastery at Monte in OHnda 

 I found clay tubes assembled in the form of panpipes, with a pleasing 

 diagonal stripe across them. The interior of each tube was partitioned 

 oflf, and contained an oval capsule of horny consistency. This en- 

 closed the larva, with its paralysed booty. Some bees too, however, 

 had made use of this structure, having built themselves cells in a 



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