THE BURROWERS 



sunshine, the more rapidly they worked. When leaving 

 the nest they would often creep out and walk around 

 it three or four times before rising on their wings, and 

 even then would sometimes alight once or twice before 

 flying away. The males, especially, liked to stand about 

 for a time, watching their more industrious sisters at 

 their work. The females usually began the day with dig- 

 ging, and frequently closed it, toward night, in the same 

 way. 



In order to see the method of stinging, we at one time 

 provided ourselves with a number of bees, and putting 

 one of them into a bottle, introduced a wasp. She seized 

 it almost immediately, with great vigor, and stung it 

 once, under the neck, and then dragged it up and down 

 the bottle by one antenna which was held in the man- 

 dibles. After a moment she shifted it and held it with 

 the second legs in the usual way. We now put in another 

 bee, which she also caught, stung in the same place, and 

 then dropped without relaxing her hold of the first one. 

 As she seemed to have nothing further to show us we 

 released her, and after circling a little she took into her 

 nest the bee that she was carrying. 



In our next experiment we used a larger glass, thinking 

 that with more space we might see malaxation. The 

 instant that the wasp was introduced she grasped the 



i6i 



