THE SPIDER EA VISITERS. 139 



slie would never finisli. When at last slie is satisfied with, her- 

 self she searches for a nesting place, starting and abandoning a 

 number of holes before she settles down. After a little work 

 she becomes anxious about her spider and goes back to look at 

 it, but instead of going to the spot she usually flies to the place of 

 her washing operations, and hunts about for five or ten minutes 

 before she finds the right plant. Under like circumstances quin- 

 quenotntns would be wild mth excitement and anxiety, but it 

 is, not so with higuttatus — she is even calm enough to stop ano 

 sip nectar from the flowei's. After she has rediscovered her 

 treasure she does not leave it until she has circled about the 

 place to impress the surroundings upon her memory. As a re- 

 sult, when she next visits the spider she finds it without diffi- 

 culty. She often comes back to look at it four or five times be- 

 fore the nest is finished, the process taking any^vhere from fif- 

 teen minutes to an hour. The tunnel runs in obliquely for an 

 inch or an inch and a half and ends in a slight enlargement. 

 The filling is sometimes done from within, the wasp standing in 

 the hole while she draws the earth in with her mandibles and 

 jams it down with her abdomen; and sometimes from without, 

 the earth being kicked in and the surface then smoothed over. 

 When we once inteniipted the process in order to dig out the 

 spider, the courageous little wasp alighted upon the knife with 

 which we were working, in her effort to protect her nest. 



We have never seen higvttatus make a long flight while car- 

 rying her spider, as is commonly done by qu'uiquenotatiis, her 

 most common habit being to run backward, dragging it by a 

 leg. In three instances that came under our notice the wasp 

 seemed resolved not to take one step on the ground, and made 

 her way along by climbing backward up on to some elevated 

 place and then flying foi-ward in the direction that she wished 

 to pursue. These flights were short, covering only from two 

 to fourteen inches. As soon as she alighted she began to climb 

 again, perhaps only to the top of a stone or a lump of earth, if 

 nothing higher were at hand, but oftener scrambling up the 

 stem of some plant or blade of grass. This mode of progress 



