WASPS, SOLITARY AND SOCIAL 



O. quadrinotatus is only one-quarter of an inch long, 

 and is dark gray with four whitish spots on the abdomen. 

 It was before nine o'clock in the morning that, while out 

 on an early inspection tour in the garden, we saw one of 

 these wasps descend upon a sandy spot, and after a mo- 

 ment's rapid scratching with her first legs enter the hole 

 that she had opened. Under her body she was carrying a 

 fly which looked like the common domestic species. It 

 was upside down, its head being tightly clasped with the 

 third pair of legs, and all of its abdomen projected be- 

 yond the abdomen of the wasp. Ashmead quotes from 

 Fabre the remarkable statement that Oxybelus carries 

 her flies home impaled on her sting, an idea that prob- 

 ably arose from the fact that nearly the whole body of 

 the fly is visible. 



Our new-found wasp stayed only a moment in her 

 nest, although, as we afterward found, it was long 

 enough for her to lay her egg on the fly. When she came, 

 out she quickly smoothed the sand over the spot with 

 her head and legs so that there was nothing to mark the 

 nest, and flew away. In three minutes she returned with 

 another fly. She alighted two or three inches away, and 

 scratched for an instant, but quickly saw her mistake, 

 and found the right spot. 



Again and again the pretty little worker went and 

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