The Mason-bees 



"Is it alive?" she seems to ask. "Is It 

 dead? Is it really my Spider? Let us be 

 wary!" 



The hesitation does not last long : the hunt- 

 ress grabs her victim, drags her backwards 

 and places her, still high up, on a second tuft 

 of herbage, two or three steps away from 

 the first. She then goes back to the burrow 

 and digs for a while. For the second time, I 

 remove the Spider and lay her at some dis- 

 tance, on the bare ground. This is the mo- 

 ment to judge of the Wasp's memory. Two 

 tufts of grass have served as temporary 

 resting-places for the game. The first, to 

 which she returned with such precision, the 

 Wasp may have learnt to know by a more or 

 less thorough examination, by reiterated visits 

 that escaped my eye ; but the second has cert- 

 ainly made but a slight impression on her 

 memory. She adopted it without any studied 

 choice; she stopped there just long enough to 

 hoist her Spider to the top; she saw it for 

 the first time and saw it hurriedly, in passing. 

 Is that rapid glance enough to provide an 

 exact recollection? Besides, there are now two 

 localities to be muddled in the insect's mem- 

 ory: the first shelf may easily be confused 

 154 



