CHAPTER III. 



BIOLOGICAL MISCELLANY. 



Recent observations extend our knowledge of llie Ilymenoptera that 

 store spiders in tlie maternal nest. Mr. William J. Fox has imblished a list' 

 of five species belonging to the one family of Pompillida;. These 

 ■cF^ ^ are Pompillus ^thiops Cresson, P. biguttatus Fabr, P. margin- 

 atus Say, Priocnemis pompilius Cresson, and P. germanus Cresson. 

 The first named species was taken in the act of capturing a large Lycosid ; 

 the second while carrying a small silvery spider, apparently a young Argiope 

 argyraspis> It is probable that all of this family prey upon spiders, a fact 

 which vastly enlarges the number of hymenopterous enemies which wage 

 warfare upon tlie order Ai'anete. It is so much the fashion to look upon 

 sjjiders with disfavor, as a cunning, fierce, and relentless enemy of insects, 

 to wliom our sympathy rather goes forth, that we are apt to forget that 

 poor Arachne is herself the victim of a remorseless fierceness and cunning 

 on the part of insect families which far exceeds her own. 



Mr. Francis R. Welsh has favored me with a vivid description of the 

 manner in whicli the arachnophagous wasps pursue their prey. The pur- 

 suer in this case was a black wasp whose name was not known, and the 

 spider was Agalena nsevia. Agalena's web was spun about four inches 

 above the ground among plants and was of the usual form, that 

 Wasps : jg ^ horizontal sheet pierced by a tube, and having numerous 



„c J stay lines rising several inches above the sheeted floor. For 

 of Spider. ■' '=' t • i i i 



fully fifteen minutes the wasp pursued the spider under and over 



the leaves and web. On a straight dasli tlie former was quicker in move- 

 ment, but the latter beat her whenever the conditions would not itermit 

 her to fly, though she also ran surprisingly fast. At the end of the first 

 round the sjaider escaped from the web unseen, and hid among some plants 

 and stones about three feet away. The wasp beat about the web for a few 

 minutes, and thence passed to some neighboring webs, and finally traversed 

 the ground near the original web until she flushed her quarry. The observer 

 thouglit that the spider bolted before the wasp saw it, but the pursuer 

 must have been very close at the time. Agalena got safely back to its 

 web, and the second round began and lasted about ten minutes, when it 



Entomological News, Vol. I., paj-'e H."). 

 (63) 



