HYMENOPTERA. — SPHEGIDE. 207 
Mém.tom., vi. mém. 8. pl. 28. f. 4—6. representing the nest and imago 
of a species from St. Domingo.) Such is the account given in various 
works; but an indefatigable observer, W. W. Saunders, Esq., F.L.S., 
in a memoir upon the habits of some Indian insects, published in the 
Trans. Entomol. Soc. (vol. i. p. 62.), seems to have satisfactorily 
proved that the nests in question are constructed by a species of 
Eumenes, and that the Pelopzi are parasites upon them, having 
opened several cells constructed by the Eumenes, and found 
Pelopzus therein.* 
In support of this opinion I may observe, 1. that the legs of the 
female Pelopzi are simple, and unprovided with apparatus for the 
construction of such nests; and 2. that it is only amongst the bees 
and wasps that we find the habit of constructing nests with materials 
brought from a distance. 
Some of the exotic species of the restricted genus Sphex are 
amongst the largest species of Hymenopterous insects. St. Fargeau 
states that he was not acquainted with the precise food stored up in 
their nests.. An interesting account has, however, been given of the 
habits of two American species by Latrobe, in the Trans. Philos. Soc. 
of Philadelph., vol.vi.; one of these is the Sphex czrulea, which, 
according to Catesby, has been known to drag a spider along eight 
times its own weight. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1749, an 
account is given by Mr. Bartram of the economy of a yellowish species 
of Sphex |from Pennsylvania, which, (as well as a Sphex ? observed 
by Duhamel, and recorded by Réaumur, ) instead of burying spiders or 
caterpillars, is asserted to supply its young with a periodical provision 
of living flies.t Another species of Sphex, or perhaps more pro- 
bably an Ammophila, from Pennsylvania, buries two or three large 
green grasshoppers for the food of its posterity, which it stings in such 
a manner that they remain half alive till the larva is hatched. (See 
also Carpenter, in Gill's Technol. Repos. 1829.) The beautiful East 
Indian and Mauritian species Ampulex ? (Jur. Chlorion Latr.) com- 
pressum Fabr., according to Sonnerat (Voyage aux Indes Orient.) 
and Réaumur (Mém. tom. vi. p. 280.), provisions its nest with Blatte, 
* Drury figures the cocoon of the Pelopzus found in the cells, agreeing with that 
of Ammophila, so that there can be no doubt that the Pelopzus is reared therein. 
+ Here, as in the observations upon Mellinus and Pelopzus, I can but observe, 
that the fact of a periodical feeding of the larve by the parent fly is pro)lematical. 
I believe this is done by none but social insects. 
