114 THE SOLITARY WASPS. 



We once captured tlie wasp in a bottle, as slie returned, load- 

 ed, to the nest. Slie dropped the beetle but soon picked it up 

 again and stung it vigorously, icitli intention, as the French 

 say, first under the neck and then further back, behind the first 

 pair of legs. After this it was dropped while the wasp fluttered 

 about for a few minutes, but it was then picked up again, and 

 stung as before. We both saw this operation repeated in exact- 

 ly the same way, four different times, with intervals of five or 

 six minutes between. 



In a nest which we excavated after watching it for nine days, 

 we found nothing until we had gone six inches down, and at 

 this point the tunnel was lost, but mixed with the crumbly earth 

 that we took out of the hole, we found eight beetles and a 

 half grown laiwa of clypeata. The destruction of this nest was 

 accomplished one morning, and when we came back to the spot 

 twenty-four hours later we found that a new one had been 

 made close by, doubtless by the same individual. We had ex- 

 pected to find her bringing beetles and dropping them foolishly 

 on the ground like Paul Marchal's Gerceris ornata, and were 

 gratified that she showed an advance in intelligence over that 

 species, although to be sure she would have been still wiser had 

 she chosen an entirely new neighborhood. Another individual 

 was so much disturbed by our scrutiny that she dropped her 

 beetle at the entrance to her nest. She did not pick it up again 

 and utilize it, although it lay for three days in the dust at the 

 threshold. 



As to thei condition of the beetles stored by clypeata, in the 

 first nest that we opened we found eight, seven of which were 

 dead, while the eighth, which we had just seen stung several 

 times, was alive but died on the following day. The second 

 nest gave us five beetles^ all of them dead and dry. In the other 

 nests that we opened we found nothing, although we knew; that 

 the beetles were there had we only been skillful enough to dis- 

 cover them. 



