THE SPIDER RAVISHERS. 157 



■end, but this was evidently a case in which, there was a failure 

 of instinct, or intelligence, or whatever faculty was concerned. 



More than a year passed before we had another opportunity 

 -of solving this problem of scelestus, and the pleasure with 

 which we hailed her second appearance in our garden may be 

 easily imagined. This time the wasp had made her nest but was 

 not ready to fill it, and when we first saw her she was running 

 about, without any particular aim in view, although at the time 

 we supposed her to be hunting. Before long she went and took 

 a look at the nice round hole which she had made near the 

 fence that separates the garden from the woods. The earth that 

 had been taken out had either been carried to a distance or had 

 been swept away after the digging was completed, for there was 

 no pile to be seen. Tliis was at two o'clock of a cloudy after- 

 noon. It may be that she needed the stimulus of sunshine to 

 make her hunt, or perhaps she realized that what was left of the 

 day would not give her sufficient time to capture her spider and 

 bring it home. At any rate she spent the remainder of the 

 afternoon in making short excursions around her nest. We 

 could find no reason for these from the utilitarian standpoint, 

 unless she was making a careful locality study of the neighbor- 

 hood, and this seems improbable since they were all in the di- 

 rection of the garden, while her hunting expeditions, when the 

 "time came for them, carried her in the opposite direction, into 

 the woods. 



Whatever their object, the trips took her from ten to twenty 

 feet from the nest, each occupying from fifteen minutes to half 

 an hour. At every return to the nest she flattened herself out 

 on the ground and wriggled in the dust, and then dragged her- 

 self all around it in the strangest manner. Perhaps these ac- 

 tions were indications of pleasurable emotion. We had seen 

 them once before, in Priononyx atrata just before she carried a 

 locust into her nest. 



At a little after four o'clock she began to investigate, very 

 carefully, the plants and grasses that immediately surrounded 

 •her hole, showing an especial interest in one bunch of clover 



