188UJ 1Q1 



if they had not already done ; and it is very permissible to suppose 

 that the eight absent ones were delayed on their way by hunting their 

 prey, or had already retired to the depths of their galleries. Thus, 

 transferred to a distance of two kilometres in a direction and by a 

 means of which they could have had no knowledge at the bottom of 

 their paper prison, my Cercerides had returned, in part at least, to 

 their home. 



I do not know to what distance the Cercerides extend their hunting, 

 and it may be that within a radius of two kilometres the country is 

 more or less known to them. If they had not been carried far enough 

 at the place to which I had transported them, they would then regain 

 their home by their acquired acquaintance with the locality ; so the 

 experiment had to be repeated, with a greater intervening distance, 

 and a place of departure that could not be suspected of being known 

 to the hymenopteron. 



At the same group of burrows from which I had drawn in the 

 morning I then took nine female Cerceris, of which three had been 

 subjected to the preceding experiment, and the transportation was 

 effected in the darkness of a box, each insect being shut up in a cornet 

 of paper. The point of departure selected was the neighbouring 

 town of Carpentras, distant about three kilometres from the burrows. 

 I determined to release my insects not in the midst of the fields, as at 

 the first time, but in the public street, in the centre of a populous 

 quarter, to which the Cercerides, with their rustic habits, had certainly 

 never penetrated. As the day was already advanced, I deferred the 

 experiment, and my captives passed the night in their cellular prisons. 



The next morning, about eight o'clock, I marked them on the 

 thorax with a double white spot, in order to distinguish them from the 

 former captures, which bore only a single spot, and I set them at 

 liberty, one after the other, in the middle of the street. Each released 

 Cerceris rose up vertically between the two rows of houses, as if to 

 disengage itself as quickly as possible from the defile of the street 

 and obtain the wide horizon ; then, clearing the roofs, it launched out 

 immediately with a hasty flight towards the south. It was from the 

 south that I had brought them into the town ; it was at the south they 

 would find their burrows. Nine times, with my nine prisoners set 

 free one after the other, I had this striking example of an insect, 

 carried into a district entirely new to it, not hesitating as to the di- 

 rection it should take to return to its nest. 



Some hours later I was at the burrows. I saw several Cerceris of 

 the first lot, recognisable by the single white spot on the thorax, but 



