218 Journal Xew York Entomological Society. [Voi. xix. 



On July III saw a robber-fly capture a Cicindela scxguttafa on the 

 trail up the side of Black Rock Alt. When the beetle was secured the 

 fly did not alight immediately, but for a considerable time poised itself 

 in the air, evidently thus preventing the active beetle from getting 

 hold of any solid object with its legs. When the beetle was dead or 

 nearly so, the fly alighted quickly enough. 



Along the same mountain path I found two burrows of the brightly 

 colored wasp Chlorion ichncumonea. I saw one of the wasps on the 

 I2th of July filling up her burrow, throwing in the dirt a little at 

 a time, and pounding it down with her head. While the pounding 

 was in progress she made a buzzing noise, which first attracted my 

 attention. Having finished off the surface like the surrounding 

 ground, she departed and I dug into the nest, finding a chamber three 

 fourths of an inch in diameter and two inches below the surface, con- 

 taining two large Atlanticus dorsalis and one smaller one. On July 

 15 an ichncumonea wasp was found at work filling in a burrow which 

 branched a little way down, each branch ending in a chamber six 

 inches below the surface. One of the chambers was stored with 

 five Atlanticus dorsalis, four large ones and one little one, while the 

 other held three large dorsalis, two females and a male. On Long 

 Island, N. Y., we have seen this species of wasp carrying a Cono- 

 cephalus triops to her burrow, so it makes use of various species of 

 Orthoptera as conditions dictate. 



Experiments have shown that many insects do not get on very 

 well in the matter of flight when their antennae have been removed. 

 This does not appear to be true of some of the grasshoppers, for on 

 July II a large female Hippiscus was observed flying about very well 

 without antennae. Later I found a female Schistocerca amcricana 

 without antennae, and she also seemed none the worse for her loss 

 and flew in a normal manner. 



The day we climbed Rabun Bald Mt. we were pleased to find 

 several nests of the mound building ant, Formica exscctoides. They 

 began to appear at about four thousand feet elevation, and some of 

 the nests were two and one half feet high. In one low mound, I 

 found the red exscctoides associated with the black Formica suh- 

 sericea. This was probably a new nest of exscctoides, started by 

 temporary parasitism in the manner pointed out by Professor W^heeler. 

 In Prince George Co., Md., exscctoides builds large mound nests on 



