104 THE BIOLOGY OF INSECTS 



place for nest-making. *' At length she went under a leaf 

 that lay close to the ground and began to dig." The 

 observers removed the leaf so as to watch the wasp's actions 

 more closely ; after ten minutes she flew away to where 

 she had left the spider, and then returned to seek the un- 

 finished nest, but ** it was evident that some landmark was 

 missing — when she reached the spot she did not recognise 

 it. At last we laid the leaf back in its place over the opening, 

 when she at once went in and resumed her work, keeping 

 at it steadily for ten minutes longer." But this nest was 

 never finished ; if we may judge from the wasp's behaviour 

 its position did not satisfy her, for she filled it up and started 

 four others in succession, each to be in its turn abandoned 

 and filled up. At the sixth trial the nest was completed 

 and the spider dragged in. Lloyd Morgan is justified in 

 his comment on this description " that it shows an amount 

 of apparent fastidiousness which is quite irreconcilable 

 with the hypothesis that the behaviour is merely instinctive." 

 It shows also that the wasp recognised the position of her 

 first nest by the leaf lying over its mouth ; her behaviour 

 suggests inevitably that she remembered that leaf so that it 

 served as a guide to the nest. 



Somewhat similar results were obtained by C. Ferton 

 (1905) in his observations on certain kinds of bees (two 

 species of Osmia) which make their nests in empty snail- 

 shells. After depositing honey and pollen and laying an 

 egg, the bee closes the mouth of the shell with fragments 

 of leaves worked up with her spittle. One species, Osmia 

 rufohirta, has the habit of rolling the shell, after provisioning 

 the nest and laying her egg, to some sheltered spot, returning 

 to the latter with the covering of leaf- fragments. A female 

 of this species was observed by Ferton to go and return 

 between the place where she was leaf-gathering and the 

 hiding-place of the shell by way of the station at which she 

 had first found the latter ; she travelled over her former 

 tracks, a recognised path. While the bee was engaged on 

 the journeys necessary for the completion of her task 

 Ferton removed the shell from its hiding-place to a position 



