246 WASPS AND THEIR WAYS 



from the female as she brought them, and 

 packing them into the nest, leaving her 

 free to hunt for more. This was an espe- 

 cially attentive little fellow, as he guarded 

 the nest almost continuously for four 

 days, the female sometimes being gone for 

 hours at a time. On the last day he even 

 revisited the nest three or four times after 

 it had been sealed up." 



These wasps sing merrily while packing 

 away the spiders in their narrow tunnels, 

 and in the case of those inhabiting the 

 straw-stack, the little mother often searched 

 for some time before finding her own par- 

 ticular straw, sometimes going into other 

 wasps' straws a number of times before 

 coming to her own doorway. One should 

 think it might be puzzling to locate the 

 exact straw out of a whole stack of them. 

 And this straw-stack was estimated to be 

 the mausoleum of from six to twelve 

 thousand spiders I 



While most of the wood-borers are 



