128 Annals Entomological Society of America [Vol. I, 



Always in company with the bees was a Sphegid (Coloptera 

 WTightii) which at the time of his observations, seven-thirty on 

 cloudy mornings, was walking slowly up and down the twigs over 

 the bodies of the sleeping bees. 



Mr. Brues| records several very interesting additional obser- 

 vations. Along the shore of Lake Michigan he found one evening 

 both sexes of Priononyx atrata sleeping in large numbers on the 

 thicker parts of a plant of sweet clover. In McHenry County, 

 111., also on sweet clover he and Mr. Melander noticed the follow- 

 ing species commingled in sleep : vScolia bicincta, Nysson plagia- 

 tus; Tachytes sp., and some other smaller forms. Epeolus was 

 predominating. He has frecpently observed males of Scolia 

 lecontei resting on an umbelliferous plant in Texas. In southern 

 Illinois he noticed males of Myzine sexcincta in abundance sleep- 

 ing on a small dried plant. Mr. Brues further ciuestions why 

 certain plants are regularly chosen by certain species. In some 

 cases, as that of Priononyx atrata it may have been odor, al- 

 though the species does not frequent sweet clover much during 

 the day. Scolia lecontei he shows is afforded a certain conceal- 

 ment by harmonizing, in the head downward position which they 

 assume, with the plants, although they would be much more per- 

 fectly concealed on certain bright flowers which they leave alone. 



On the second of June last summer I was driving in the Mt. 

 Diablo Range along the Arroya de los Gatos near where it opens 

 out into the extremely hot and dry Kettleman plains in the south- 

 western part of the San Joaquin Valley in Fresno County, Cali- 

 fornia, when slightly before dusk my attention was called to a 

 bunch of dark objects attached to a dried stem of wild oats. 

 Upon observation they proved to be black wasps asleep, (Priono- 

 nyx atrata). Looking farther I observed another and still an- 

 other such group, and within the next hour, or until it became 

 too dark to see them, I observed scores, almost hundreds of these 

 bunches of resting wasps, sometimes on wild oats, sometimes on 

 other plants. Each group contained from one or two to a couple 

 of dozen individuals, and I was often able to break them off and 

 place them in a jar before they became considerably aroused. In 

 all I captured 490 odd individuals before total dark, about an 

 hour's time. 



J Journ. N. Y. Ent. Soc, XI, p. 228. 



