THE SENSE OF DIRECTION IN WASPS. 213 



lier courtslup and honeymoon, and these too were passed in 

 going from flower to flower, from one part of the garden to an- 

 other. Many a day we have followed her when she flew from 

 blossom to blossom along a row of bean plants, turning, when 

 she reached the end, and wending her way leisurely back along 

 the next row. Then comes a day when we see her running 

 over the ground and looking carefully under the weeds for a 

 good nesting-place. At last a spot is selected and she begins 

 to dig, but two or three times before the work is completed she 

 goes away for a short flight. When it is done, and covered 

 over, she flies away, but returns again and again within the next 

 few hours, to look at the spot and, perhaps, to make some little 

 alteration in her arrangements. From this time on, until the 

 catei-pillars are slored and the egg laid, she visits her nest sev- 

 eral times a day, so that she becomes perfectly familiar with the 

 neighborhood, and it is not surprising, after all, that she is able 

 to carry her prey from any point in her territory in a nearly di- 

 rect line to her hole — we say nearly direct, for there was almost 

 invariably some slight mistake in the direction which made a 

 little looking about necessary before the exact spot was found. 



After days passed in flying about the garden — going up Bean 

 Street and down Onion Avenue, time and time again — one 

 would think that any formal study of the precise locality of a 

 nest might be omitted, but it was not so with our wasps. They 

 made repeated and detailed studies of the surroundings of their 

 nests. Moreover, when their prey was laid down for a moment 

 on the way home, they felt the necessity of noting the place 

 carefully before leaving it. 



Of the species that catch their prey before making the nest 

 we have good examples in Pompilus quinquenotatns, the torna- 

 do wasp, and fuscipemiis, the Pompilus with the red girdle. 



The tornado wasp may make her nest anywhere from one to 

 ten feet from the spot on which she has deposited her spider, 

 while fuscipennis never goes more than fourteen inches away. 

 During the process of excavation both of these wasps pay sev- 

 eral visits to the spider and frequently they have difficulty in 



