478 NOTES ON VARIOUS INSECTS. 



observe no trace of any cells or cocoons that they had come out 

 of. I was sometimes tempted to think they had crept under the 

 loose earth for shelter ; it was a cold morning, with several 

 sharp snow storms. In the latter part of last summer I went 

 and broke down some of the earth, and brought home a quan- 

 tity of the cells I had extracted, with the larvae included. 

 Happening to break some of the cells in taking them out of 

 the earth, I observed that they had eaten all their food, and 

 had settled themselves for their hybernation, having the head 

 doubled down upon the breast. I put them, when I got home, 

 into two boxes, in one of which (a small oblong oval pill box) 

 one of the larvEC which had been unhoused, as above stated, 

 spun a web of silk, joining three of the cells near it to the side 

 of the box, by which means it formed itself a circular retreat, 

 something like the tubular part attached to a spider's web, in 

 which it remained all the winter. In the beginning of this 

 summer, when I examined them, I found two solitary wasps 

 had liberated themselves from the cells, and two individuals of 

 Chrysis neglecta? Shuck.*^ [See Note B.] I then opened most 

 of the cells, and found them inhabited by either solitary wasps, 

 or Chrysis neglecta^ or bidentata ; they were all fully developed, 

 and had their wings expanded, before I liberated them. Those 

 of C bidentata were alive and equally alert as when they are 

 skipping about in the bright sunshine ; those of C. neglecta were 

 most of them either dead or almost so ; some of the wasps 

 were also dead. There was a quantity of white cottony down 

 within some of the cells in which the wasps dwelt, [See 

 Note C] I had not any other insect in any of the cells except 

 the three forementioned species. In one place, instead of a 

 cell, I found a number of small green caterpillars perfect in 

 shape and colour, and next them a quantity of oval cocoons, 

 dingy purplish brown, with a white band round the middle, 

 two lines in length, out of several of which I had some minute 

 ichneumons a short time after the wasps were disclosed in the 

 beginning of this summer ; so that I suppose the mother wasp 

 had made free with caterpillars that had already been selected 



^ My reason for putting a sign of doubt to Ch. neglecta is that neither of those 

 mentioned, nor several that I have caught at large, have any sign whatever of 

 the longitudinal elevation on the abdomen, so conspicuous in the majority of 

 this genus: but they agree with Mr. Shuckard's description in size, colour, 

 edentate apex of the abdomen, and open marginal cell. 



