SEVERAL LITTLE WASPS 



choice, and after forty-five minutes spent in digging, it 

 was completed. As the spider was brought toward the 

 nest it was left again and again while the nervous little 

 wasp flew to the hole, went in, examined, and came out 

 again. At last she backed in, caught the spider by the 

 abdomen, and dragged it down. It was too big — the 

 head stuck in the hole; but she pulled from below while 

 we pushed gently from above, and it slowly disappeared. 

 When she came out we opened the nest and took the 

 spider. The egg was fastened to the middle of the left 

 side of the abdomen. This one, as was also the case with 

 a second and third afterward taken from fasciatus, was 

 much less affected by the poison than is usual among the 

 victims of solitary wasps, moving from the time it was 

 taken, without any stimulation, and improving rapidly 

 from day to day. Our second spider appeared to be 

 blind, and died upon the sixteenth day, while the third 

 had entirely recovered by the seventeenth day after it 

 was stung, and was released. Fasciatus, then, probably 

 depends upon packing her victim in tightly to keep it 

 quiet. 



It was three days and a half before the egg that we 

 had taken hatched. The larva developed rapidly, retain- 

 ing its hold at the spot to which the mother had fastened 

 it. The spider remained alive for six days, and the larv^a 



83 



