1903 Fossorial Ilymawptera 29 



mouth of the burrow. Now the insect went down the 

 burrow and remained out of sight for a few minutes, then 

 hastily reappearing, seized the spider and retreated back- 

 wards down the burrow with her victim held firmly in her 

 jaws. I waited nearly half-an-hour for her to come out, 

 but in vain, and was then unfortunately called away ; so I 

 marked the spot and got up to go, and in so doing started 

 a miniature sand-slide, which smothered the burrow. With 

 a stiff piece of marram grass I did my clumsy best to reopen 

 the hole and departed. In about an hour I returned and 

 found, to my delight, that my hole had not been accepted, 

 but that the insect had dug her way out by a fresh hole that 

 was now evident close beside my feeble attempt. It was 

 the work of few minutes to dig out the spider whose fate 

 had so interested me : a little careful sifting of the sand soon 

 gave me a nice specimen of the small grey-and-black spider, 

 Lycosa picta, with the egg of the Pompilid firmly fastened on 

 to the anterior dorsal surface of the right side of the ab- 

 domen. I mention this position because subsequently I dug 

 out scores of Pompilid larders and invariably found this 

 species of spider and no other in the store-house, and the egg 

 always occupying the above-described position. Why this posi- 

 tion ? I can hazard but a suggestion — viz., that in this 

 position it is fairly inaccessible to the legs of the spider, 

 even if it recover from the effects of the sting ; but it would 

 be equally safe on the left side, and yet I never found it 

 there. The exclusive presence of Lycosa picta was extremely 

 interesting, and furnished me with a most striking case of 

 the value of protective colour resemblance. On these sand- 

 dunes two species of spiders were common above all others 

 — viz., Lycosa picta, whose appearance I have described, and 

 which was very conspicuous on the pale yellow, almost 

 white sand ; and Philodromus fallax, a pale, washed - out 

 looking spider, appearing as though bleached by the sun, 

 and matching the sand with a perfection that is simply 

 marvellous : until the spider moves it is impossible to detect 

 it, and, so far as I observed, it is in no hurry to move, but 

 realises that its strength is to sit still, at any rate in the 

 daytime. Now, notwithstanding the abundance of Ph. fallax 

 (which, by the way, is usually regarded as a rare spider), I 



