AMMOPHILA AND HER CATERPILLARS. 25 



-where the wasp remains for a few minutes, afterwards returning- and 

 closing- up the entrance precisely as before. This, we thought, was 

 the end, and supposed that the wasp would now be off about her other 

 affairs, but not so; soon she returns with another larva, precisely like 

 the first, and the whole operation is again repeated. And not only the 

 second time, but again and again, till four or five of the larvae have 

 been stored up for the sustainment of her future offspring. Once, 

 w^hile a wasp had gone down the hole with a larva, my friend quietly 

 removed the door stone that she had placed by the entrance. Return- 

 ing, she looked about for her door, but not finding it, apparently mis- 

 trusted the honesty of a neighbor, which had just descended, leaving 

 her own door temptingly near. She purloined this pebble and was 

 making off with it, when the rightful owner appeared and gave chase, 

 ■compelling her to relinquish it. 



The things that struck us as most remarkable were the unerring 

 judgment in the selection of a pebble of precisely the right size to fit 

 the entrance, and the use of the small pebble in smoothing down and 

 packing the soil over the opening, together with the instinct that 

 taught them to remove every evidence that the earth had been dis- 

 turbed. 



Since the wasps of our two species of Ammophila make their 

 nests first and then do their hunting it follows that they must 

 ■sometimes carry their prey for a considerable distance. The 

 most ambitious attempt of this kind that we ever witnessed is the 

 subject of one of our observations on the habits of A. gracilis. 



The wasp was first seen carrying a large green caterpillar, 

 which projected at both ends beyond her own body, across the 

 potato field at the lower end of the garden. We could not tell 

 how far she had already brought it, but judging by the direction 

 from which she was coming, and by the fact that we had never 

 «een that species of caterpillar in the garden, she had probably 

 come through the fence from the woods beyond. She moved 

 along briskly over the remaining part of the potato field, and 

 then through an adjoining bean patch into the corn field. This 

 had been a place of much anxiety to us earlier in the summer 

 but now the corn had been stacked and we could follow her 

 without difficulty. So far she had been going due south, but 

 now she made a turn and plunged into the long, tangled grass 

 which grew around and among some large, overgrown raspberry 



