THE HUNTRESS WASPS 



surface, rock or wall, or board or beam. She spreads 

 and shapes her mortar, until, after many visits to the 

 nmd-bed, she has built a tubular cell about an inch 

 long and three-eighths of an inch wide. 



Then her huntress instinct awakes and her raids upon 

 the spider realm begin; for within this cyhnder the 

 mother mason will put a single egg. In course of time 

 this will hatch into a ravenous larva, whose natural 

 food is living spiders; and these the mother proceeds 

 to capture and entomb within her nmd-daub nursery. 

 On this errand she may 

 be seen hawking over 

 and near cobwebs of 

 various sorts, ventur- 

 ing within the meshed 

 and beaded snares that 

 prove fatal to most 

 incomers and some- 

 times even to herself. 

 If the occupant, ex- 

 pectant of prey, sallies 

 forth to seize the in- 

 truder, it finds itself a 

 captive, not a captor. The wasp shakes the silken 

 filament from wings and feet, turns upon the spider, 

 seizes and stings it, bears it to her cell, and thrusts 

 it therein. 



Goethe, in his autobiography, alludes to this habit 

 in speaking of his father's aversion to inns. "Often," 

 said the poet, " he would say that he always fancied he 

 saw a great cobweb spun across the gate of an inn so 

 ingeniously that insects could indeed fly in, but even 

 the privileged wasp could not fly out again unplucked." 



213 . 



EGG-CELLS OP BLUE MUD-DAUBER 

 WASP {CHALYBION C.SRULEUM) 



