The Hunting Wasps 



Four successive alterations in the site; 

 changes in the colour, the smell, the materials 

 of the outside of the home; lastly, the pain 

 of a double wound: all had failed to baffle 

 the Wasp or even to make her waver as to 

 the precise locality of her door. I had come 

 to the end of my stratagems and understood 

 less than ever how the insect, if it possess no 

 special guide in some faculty unknown to us, 

 can find its way when sight and scent are 

 baffled by the artifices which I have men- 

 tioned. 



A few days later, a lucky experiment re- 

 opened the question and allowed me to 

 study it under another aspect. In this case, 

 we uncover the Bembex' burrow all the way 

 along, without changing its appearance too 

 much, an operation made easier by the shal- 

 lowness of the burrow, its almost horizontal 

 direction and the lack of consistency of the 

 soil in which it is dug. With this object we 

 scrape the sand away gradually with a knife. 

 Thus deprived of its roof from end to end, 

 the underground dwelling becomes an open 

 trench, a conduit, straight or curved, some 

 eight inches long, open at the spot where the 

 entrance-door used to be and finishing in a 

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