Some Solitary Wasps of Texas. 63 



length of her body. After working at it for a minute she aban- 

 doned the nest for some reason, filled it with sand to the top and 

 started a new one near by. Although digging in a well-worn grav- 

 elly pathway she made astonishing progress. Biting the pebbles 

 and smaller sand grains loose with her powerful jaws she scratched 

 the loose material out with her fore-feet or carried the larger pieces 

 out with her mandibles. Her movements had almost machine-like 

 regularity, entering the nest forwards and invariably backing out. 

 Back and forth she went, darting in and out so quickly and smoothly 

 that I can best compare her movements to those of a rubber ball at- 

 tached to the end of an elastic band. After thus working for 

 nineteen minutes, Priononyx flew away to a distance of twenty feet 

 where she pulled forth a large green locust. Straddling her prey 

 like Ammophila and grasping one of the short antennae she ran 

 swiftly down the path. Within two feet of her nest she carried the 

 grasshopper into a tuft of grass, which she easily mounted with her 

 burden thanks to the length and the strength of her legs. After 

 then digging at her nest for five minutes more she took up her vic- 

 tim as before and carried it over to her nest, laying it down with its 

 head near the entrance. She then, like Ammophila again, backed 

 down the tunnel and pulled the locust after her. In a minute she 

 reappeared and immediately began to close the tunnel. Scratching 

 in pebbles and dust, she tamped them down with her head. I now 

 placed a net over her but she worked complacently on. I could 

 see her every action through the thin net, for she worked but a 

 foot below my eyes. After the net was full flush with the surface 

 good sized pebbles were carried over it. Time and again these were 

 tightly grasped in her mandibles and pressed down with might and 

 main, the wasp standing the while straight on her head and almost 

 turning a summersault while her busy buzz indicated the exertion 

 which the operation demanded. Then she dug awhile in the aban- 

 doned hole she had previously filled in but soon quit digging and 

 filled it in a second time. I slightly raised the net and Priononyx 

 flew away. 



An hour later she was again at work only a few inches from the 

 scene of her previous operations, digging another nest. Three feet 

 away I found another green locust under a clump of grass — an- 

 other prey for another nest. Thus it seems certain that Thomae 

 first catches her prey and then digs her nest. At this juncture I 

 caught her. 



