AMMOPHILA AND HER CATERPILLARS. 21 



anytking is put into the nest. During this prolonged search 

 she often revisits the spot and thus keeps fresh the memory of 

 its locality. As soon as the first caterpillar is stored she lays an 

 e^g on it and then closes the nest as before. The second one 

 may be brought in within a few hours, but in one instance that 

 came under our notice (No. 79), we feel sure that the interval 

 was as much as three days. We saw the interment of the second 

 caterpillar, and upon excavating, found upon the first one a 

 larva at least a day old; and we suppose that at least two days 

 had elapsed between the laying and the hatching of the egg. 



When the provisioning is completed the time arrives for the 

 final closing of the nest, and in this, as in all the processes of 

 Ammophila, the character of the work differs with the individ- 

 ual. For example, of two wasps that we saw close their nests 

 on the same day, one wedged two or three pellets into the top 

 of the hole, kicked in a little dust and then smoothed the sur- 

 face over, finishing it all within five minutes. This one seemed 

 possessed by a spirit of hurry and bustle, and did not believe in 

 spending time on non-essentials. The other, on the contrary, 

 was an artist, an idealist. She worked for an hour, first filling 

 the neck of the burrow with fine earth which was jammed down 

 with much energy, this part of the work being accompanied by 

 a loud and cheerful humming, and next arranging the surface 

 of the ground with scrupulous care, and sweeping every par- 

 ticle of dust to a distance. Even then she was not satisfied 

 but went scampering around hunting for some fitting object to 

 crown the whole. First she tried to drag a withered leaf to the 

 spot but the long stem stuck in the ground and embarrassed her. 

 Relinquishing this she ran along a branch of the plant under 

 which she was working and, leaning over, picked up from the 

 ground below a good sized stone, but the effort was too much 

 for her and she turned a somersault on to the ground. She 

 then started to bring a large lump of earth but this evidently 

 did not come up to her ideal for she dropped it after a moment, 

 and seizing another dry leaf carried it successfully to the spot 

 and placed it directly over the nest. A third instance of the 



