WASPS, SOCIAL AND SOLITARY 



two clumps, some of them half-eaten, and some of them 

 fresh, but all quite dead. We have no doubt that punc- 

 tatus completely provisions one pocket and closes the 

 opening from it into the gallery, before she starts an- 

 other, making a series of six or eight independent cells. 

 The provision for one larva is probably twelve or four- 

 teen bees, the capture of which, in good weather, would 

 be a fair day's work. 



That the males do not always stay on in their ancestral 

 home is shown by an observation that we made on the 

 only occasion that we ever saw this species in our garden. 

 Nothing was stirring at half past three o'clock in the 

 afternoon, and we had given up work and started for 

 home, when, in going up an inclined part of the field, 

 we noticed something in motion within a ragged- edged 

 hole which ran obliquely into the ground. It seemed 

 strange that a wasp should be beginning its nest at so 

 late an hour; but a wasp it was, as we could plainly see 

 when we took an attitude sufficiently humble. It was 

 loosening the earth with its mandibles, and then pushing 

 it backward with its hind legs and abdomen. We had 

 scarcely settled down to watching it when a second one 

 of the same species appeared, and with a good deal of 

 fuss and flutter began to dig its hole close by. The spot 

 chosen by this second one proved unsatisfactory, and 



164 



