THE LIFE OF A SOLITARY WASP 



OF all " the Tribes of my Frontier " none are 

 more deserving of notice than the solitary 

 wasp. Their ways are of even greater 

 interest than those of the social hymenop- 

 tera, whose praises have been so admirably sung by 

 Maeterlinck, Grant Allen, and others. Perhaps it is the 

 lonely life led by the solitary wasps that gives them 

 so much character ; for character they certainly have. 

 " So whimsical," writes Burroughs, " so fickle, so for- 

 getful, so fussy, so wise, and yet so foolish, as these 

 little people are ; such victims of routine and yet so 

 individual, such apparent foresight and yet such thought- 

 lessness, at such great pains to dig a hole and build a 

 cell, and then at times sealing it up without storing it 

 with food or laying the egg, half finishing hole after 

 hole, and then abandoning them without any apparent 

 reason ; sometimes killing their spiders, at other times 

 only paralysing them ; one species digging its burrow 

 before it captures its game, another catching its prey 

 and then digging the hole ; some of them hanging the 

 spider up in the fork of a weed to keep it away from 

 the ants while they work at the nest, and running to it 

 every few minutes to see that it is safe ; others laying 

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